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  #1621  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2021, 3:03 PM
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If indeed the scenario is CNN had ALL the data in the proposal released by the White House, sure. It would have been a reasonable expectation for such a clarification. My issue with your initial comment is with what came across as your enthusiasm to prescribe malice on the motivations of CNN. You seemed to stop short of saying "fake news, what is CNN covering up for Biden??? Building Fema camps for uncooperative gun loving conservatives? Giving money to the CCP?" ...it came across at a minimum as conspiratorial and a rush to judgement. If you didnt realize that's how it came across, you do now.
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  #1622  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2021, 11:59 PM
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Originally Posted by Busy Bee View Post
It is big, but lets be honest, it should be bigger.
Even just a wee bit bigger. Why is there a gap between between Pueblo and La Junta? It seems like closing that short gap could be a huge improvement to multiple connections in the system.
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  #1623  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2021, 12:00 AM
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Originally Posted by electricron View Post
If there was 18% of a Trump spending program unreported to where it was going to be spent, there were suggestions of corruption arising from the peanut galley. All I ask is for better accounting from the news media and you are suggesting I am a political hack. Why? News media politicalize articles in two ways, by adding false innuendoes and by deleting truthful details. Which one do you suggest is being used here by them?

Can we not agree it is lazy reporting to leave 18% of the total unreported at the least?
Worse is the idea that Biden's administration has added 18% to the spending program without knowing where it is going!
Unfortunately good reporting seems to be few and far between these days.
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  #1624  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2021, 6:56 AM
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Originally Posted by Busy Bee View Post
If indeed the scenario is CNN had ALL the data in the proposal released by the White House, sure. It would have been a reasonable expectation for such a clarification. My issue with your initial comment is with what came across as your enthusiasm to prescribe malice on the motivations of CNN. You seemed to stop short of saying "fake news, what is CNN covering up for Biden??? Building Fema camps for uncooperative gun loving conservatives? Giving money to the CCP?" ...it came across at a minimum as conspiratorial and a rush to judgement. If you didnt realize that's how it came across, you do now.
I reported the facts that there are holes in the funding, that CNN did not fill those holes or even report there were those holes, and asked why? I did stop short of even calling them lazy on my first reply with a link to the CNN blog. I am not responsible how you answered my question of why.

$367 billion is a lot of money to be missing in a blog with a headline of what is in the infrastructure spending bill. I'll leave the judgmental accusations to others. We deserve better news reporting than what we are getting.
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  #1625  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2021, 7:58 AM
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Originally Posted by electricron View Post

Is it too much to ask for better accounting from CNN?

We all know Congress will put Biden's proposed funding proposals into file 13 as soon as it arrives from the White House and will start amending the funding program at their own tune. Will CNN ever give us a final accounting where this money is supposed to go?
I'm looking at the linked article right now. Here are the numbers provided-

Transportation 621 billion
Home Health Care Services and Workforce 400 billion (You failed to list this)
Manufacturing 300 billion
Housing 213 billion
Research and Development 180 billion
Water 111 billion
Schools 100 billion
Digital Infrastructure 100 billion
Workforce Development 100 billion
Veterans' Hospitals 18 billion
Federal Buildings 10 billion

TOTAL 2.153 trillion


Where is this lazy reporting you're going on about?
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  #1626  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2021, 12:36 PM
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Originally Posted by Mister Uptempo View Post
I'm looking at the linked article right now. Here are the numbers provided-

Transportation 621 billion
Home Health Care Services and Workforce 400 billion (You failed to list this)
Manufacturing 300 billion
Housing 213 billion
Research and Development 180 billion
Water 111 billion
Schools 100 billion
Digital Infrastructure 100 billion
Workforce Development 100 billion
Veterans' Hospitals 18 billion
Federal Buildings 10 billion

TOTAL 2.153 trillion


Where is this lazy reporting you're going on about?
Thank you for finding the $400 billion I overlooked.
Now, could you help me find the missing $105 billion in the transportation sector?
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  #1627  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2021, 3:27 PM
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Originally Posted by electricron View Post
Thank you for finding the $400 billion I overlooked.
Now, could you help me find the missing $105 billion in the transportation sector?
You know, it's entirely possible the reason not all the specifics of the transportation portion of the bill were published is because the bill has not been officially introduced in Congress, and the press was merely highlighting the bullet points that were made public.

When the bill hits the House, there will be plenty of reporters, including CNN's, who will go through it and analyze it. It'll be published online as well, so you can do the same all by yourself.
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  #1628  
Old Posted Apr 7, 2021, 2:31 PM
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Originally Posted by electricron View Post
The out of date data for the Eurostar reflects more of what would be built in the USA using exiting rail corridors to reach existing train stations in Chicago, Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, St. Louis, And Charlotte, Atlanta, New York City, Philadelphia, DC, New Haven, Boston, LA, SF, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, etc. When the HSR proposals for the USA include brand new dedicated HSR train stations in new rail corridors in the cities, only then would the new Eurostar data set reflect reality. Like they will for Texas Central and Brightline, which are building brand new dedicated train stations.
I can understand if existing infrastructure is used as an interim measure (i.e. like the early days of Eurostar), but if the plan is to never deliver dedicated HSR routes or maintain a mish-mash, then what is the point? Dressing up a route as HSR when it isn’t is completely counterproductive.

Two decades ago, rather than build a new high-speed railway to relieve the West Coast Main Line, the UK authorities opted for an extensive upgrade of the WCML. It was incredibly expensive, disruptive (line closures every weekend for several years) and the capacity that it provided? Already used up, with the prospect that by 2033/34 there will be the equivalent of 10.5 Acela Express trainsets worth of people standing on intercity journeys departing London Euston each PM peak. Hence the need for HS2: deliver a step-change in capacity with the added benefit of faster train services. Advocates of alternatives to HS2 run into the same issues as the WCML upgrade, except with less benefits, more disruption and higher costs.

Utilising existing rail and road corridors is sometimes helpful, many HSR routes around the world use such corridors to great effect as it sometimes results in reduced land take and minimises other complications that would hamper delivery of a viable route. There are countless areas in the US where this could be replicated.
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  #1629  
Old Posted Apr 7, 2021, 5:06 PM
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Originally Posted by electricron View Post
Thank you for finding the $400 billion I overlooked.
Now, could you help me find the missing $105 billion in the transportation sector?
It is:
$50 billion for infrastructure resilience
$25 billion for projects of regional/national significance
$20 billion for investment in neighborhoods cut off by historic investments

The remaining $10 billion is probably scattered among smaller items that are mentioned under the $621 billion but did not have a dollar figure attached. These items are mentioned as getting increased investment without attaching any dollar figures:

- FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program
- HUD’s Community Development Block Grant program
- new initiatives at the Department of Transportation
- a bipartisan tax credit to provide incentives to low- and middle-income families and to small businesses to invest in disaster resilience
- transition and relocation assistance to support community-led transitions for the most vulnerable tribal communities.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-...can-jobs-plan/

If someone is a Politico Pro subscriber, they have more transportation funding details (e.g. they have details on the proposed allocation of the $115 billion for roads and bridges: $50 billion for road modernization, $40 billion for bridges, etc.):
https://twitter.com/tsnyderdc/status...668144640?s=21

Last edited by numble; Apr 7, 2021 at 6:06 PM.
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  #1630  
Old Posted Apr 8, 2021, 11:45 AM
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This bill, although massive, will fall short. Just like the stimulus bill in 2009. Imagine what we could get for 2 trillion if it were almost all spent on roads, rails, buses, and public transit overall. Even if only 80% went to those areas, we would see 1.6 trillion spent on transport.

Every bridge could be upgraded. Every large city could get rid of their maintenance backlogs, expansions could happen, buses purchased, bike infrastructure could explode in all major cities. It would be transformational.

This ain't it.
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  #1631  
Old Posted Apr 8, 2021, 1:58 PM
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100%

Keep in mind there is nothing stopping this bill from becoming more generous while in Congress. There are a contingency of Dem's that are calling for 10 trillion over 10 years. That's a closer number of what it's going to take to catch up with the rest of the world.
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  #1632  
Old Posted Apr 8, 2021, 6:27 PM
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Originally Posted by numble View Post
It is:
$50 billion for infrastructure resilience
$25 billion for projects of regional/national significance
$20 billion for investment in neighborhoods cut off by historic investments

The remaining $10 billion is probably scattered among smaller items that are mentioned under the $621 billion but did not have a dollar figure attached. These items are mentioned as getting increased investment without attaching any dollar figures:

- FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program
- HUD’s Community Development Block Grant program
- new initiatives at the Department of Transportation
- a bipartisan tax credit to provide incentives to low- and middle-income families and to small businesses to invest in disaster resilience
- transition and relocation assistance to support community-led transitions for the most vulnerable tribal communities.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-...can-jobs-plan/

If someone is a Politico Pro subscriber, they have more transportation funding details (e.g. they have details on the proposed allocation of the $115 billion for roads and bridges: $50 billion for road modernization, $40 billion for bridges, etc.):
https://twitter.com/tsnyderdc/status...668144640?s=21
https://twitter.com/numble/status/13...064201217?s=20
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  #1633  
Old Posted Apr 15, 2021, 8:45 PM
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High-Speed Rail and Connecting Transit

https://pedestrianobservations.com/2...cting-transit/

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.....

- Noah Smith is skeptical about high-speed rail in the United States. He makes a bunch of different arguments against it, but I want to zoom in on the first, the issue of connecting transit, which Noah is far from the first person to bring up. It’s a genuine drawback of rail planning in the United States, but it’s very easy to overrate its importance. Connecting transit is useful, as is the related issue of city centralization, but its effect, serious as it is, is only on already marginal high-speed routes, like Atlanta-Memphis or Dallas-Kansas City. Los Angeles suffers from lacking connecting transit, but it’s also so big that nothing it connects to is marginal. Finally, high-speed rail and urban centralization are not in competition, but rather are complements.

- Let’s discuss New York now; Los Angeles deserves a separate section in this post. Noah lived on Long Island for years; he could connect to any intercity train by taking the LIRR to Penn Station and changing there. It’s this connection that he describes as a nightmare. But the question is, a nightmare compared to what? It’s clearly far less convenient than the timed Swiss connections, or even untimed connections between the Berlin S-Bahn and intercity trains. But the LIRR is a timetabled train, and while delays happen, they’re measured in minutes, not tens of minutes. Passengers can time themselves to arrive 10 minutes before the intercity train departs, even today. All of this gets easier if a minimally competent agency is in charge and track numbers are scheduled in advance and printed on the ticket as they are here or in Japan.

- The secondary transit cities of the US are dicier. Their modal splits are all in the teens; San Francisco (excluding Silicon Valley) is the highest, with 17.5%. In that way, they’re comparable to Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Strasbourg, and Lille. However, the way non-New York transit systems work in the US is, the system is usually semi-decent at ferrying people to and from city center, it’s just not strong for other destinations. In Boston, for example, people could transfer to the subway at South Station or Back Bay and cover a decent chunk of urban destinations. It’s nowhere nearly as good as the options for Paris or Berlin, but it’s not the same as not having any connecting transit.

- Noah is on stronger grounds when he criticizes Los Angeles. Even Los Angeles has 1.5 subway lines connecting to Union Station, soon to be augmented with the Regional Connector, but the city is weakly-centered, and a car or taxi connection to one’s ultimate destination is likely. Moreover, the destinations within Los Angeles are not centered on Downtown; for example, high-end hotels are the most likely to be found on the Westside. However, there are two saving graces for trains to Los Angeles. The first is that Los Angeles’s transit ridership is so low because the city’s job geography is so decentralized that the network is bad at connecting local origins with local destinations. If it is guaranteed that one of the two points connected is Union Station, the city’s network is still bad for its size, but becomes usable. The under-construction Westside subway will open later this decade, providing decent (if not good) connectivity from the train station to high-end destinations in that part of the region.

.....
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  #1634  
Old Posted Apr 20, 2021, 6:08 PM
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The U.S. Is Not Ready for High Speed Rail

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3aqz...igh-speed-rail

Quote:
.....

- While I love the optimism HSR fuels in American transit nerds, we are not starting from where Japan was in the 1950s or France in the 1970s. We have no passenger rail culture to speak of outside of the northeast corridor and some tourist novelty routes. It would require an incredible building spree, the likes of which the U.S. hasn't seen for generations. --- So, at the heart of this HSR question is not "would it be good?" but, rather, a more strategic issue. Do we take the lower risk, lower reward path to drastically improve the rail infrastructure we already have? Or do we go with the big swing and try to start all over with high speed rail? We have a passenger rail network. It sucks right now, but we can make it better a lot easier than we can build a new one.

- One possible answer is "why not both?" This has obvious appeal. It's always preferable to not be forced into difficult choices. But given the several hundred billion dollars currently needed to build just one U.S. HSR line, "build it all" isn't likely to happen, especially in a country where one political party is opposed to publicly-funded HSR (although that wasn't always the case). --- HSR requires a lot more work than just buying faster trains. It needs new tracks and signals and often new routes entirely to both reduce the severity of curves and hills to enable faster speeds and to cut travel distances. --- The U.S. already has an extensive 140,000-mile functional rail network owned and operated by freight rail companies that is also used by Amtrak. If we're going to have decent U.S. rail service in time to make a meaningful impact on emissions, this is our best shot.

.....
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  #1635  
Old Posted Apr 22, 2021, 9:55 PM
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Originally Posted by jtown,man View Post
This bill, although massive, will fall short. Just like the stimulus bill in 2009. Imagine what we could get for 2 trillion if it were almost all spent on roads, rails, buses, and public transit overall. Even if only 80% went to those areas, we would see 1.6 trillion spent on transport.

Every bridge could be upgraded. Every large city could get rid of their maintenance backlogs, expansions could happen, buses purchased, bike infrastructure could explode in all major cities. It would be transformational.

This ain't it.
I agree. The more and more I think about this proposal the more I don't like it. Initially I was super excited but I keep seeing article after article comparing freeway removals like 375 in Detroit(which is justified) to the 345 in Dallas which would be flat out moronic to remove for multiple reasons. Roads and freeways are going to get a massive shaft and we aren't even getting anything THAT exciting in the way of any mass transit expansion which is also needed like HSR.

The Amtrak proposal while needed isn't that exciting. It will bring our rail network from 1880 to 1930. Oh boy I can't wait and there are several missing connections that boggle my mind. I'm still leaning towards supporting it just because our infrastructure is in such dire condition but the more and more I learn about this proposal the less I like it.

Like you said, when you think of what a straight 2.1 trillion could do if injected straight into our roads, electric lines, rail, ports/waterways, and airports, it makes it even more maddening.
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  #1636  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2021, 2:15 PM
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Originally Posted by plutonicpanda View Post
The Amtrak proposal while needed isn't that exciting. It will bring our rail network from 1880 to 1930
U.S. passenger rail service was spectacular in 1930. All of the great union stations had just been built or were about to come online. For example, Cincinnati's new Union Terminal, with 16 through platforms, opened in 1933:


This project included tons of passenger-train specific improvements, like two passenger-train only viaducts to two different bridges over the Ohio River. The terminal has had just one every-other-day passenger train in the Amtrak era. The piers of those viaducts are still there but the decking is gone. All of that was paid for with private money. The stockholders and bondholders all took baths.

Biden-era funding isn't going to come close to restoring even 10% of what used to exist in the interior of the country 100 years ago. Many of the rail lines have been completely abandoned or given over to bike paths.

That said, the Chicago-centered plan is sound and without a doubt the business exists to run 5+ daily trains to each of the 2~ million metros within a 300-mile radius. Almost no major capital spending is necessary to achieve this aside from ordering the trains themselves.
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  #1637  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2021, 3:40 PM
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Almost no major capital spending is necessary to achieve this aside from ordering the trains themselves.
I will quibble with this... so long as freight railroads insist on running their trains on a loosey-goosey non-schedule, it will be impossible to run reliable passenger service without a lot of capital spending on 2nd track or at least passing sidings.

Even Brightline which is nominally under common management with FEC needed to double-track their mainline, even though they should theoretically be able to schedule their freights tightly around passenger service.

https://homesignalblog.wordpress.com...rail-capacity/

In theory all you need is for the Federal gov't to "get tough" with freight railroads, but this ignores the tremendous money they spend on lobbying.
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  #1638  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2021, 6:58 PM
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Originally Posted by ardecila View Post
I will quibble with this... so long as freight railroads insist on running their trains on a loosey-goosey non-schedule, it will be impossible to run reliable passenger service without a lot of capital spending on 2nd track or at least passing sidings.

In theory all you need is for the Federal gov't to "get tough" with freight railroads, but this ignores the tremendous money they spend on lobbying.
Many of the intercity railroads in the Midwest are double track for at least half of their length. There are also duplicative parallel lines in many areas. A single owner (i.e. CSX) sometimes owns two formerly competing single-track railroads and operates the pair like a double-track railroad. That's why the circa-2010 3C's plan that was cancelled by Gov. John Kasich wasn't going to be very expensive.

The three big north-south railroads through Kentucky are also double-track for about 50% of their length. Establishing Chicago>Nashville and Detroit/Cleveland via Louisville and Detroit/Cleveland via Cincinnati won't be that expensive to get going to the 5 trains per day per direction level.

Last edited by jmecklenborg; Apr 23, 2021 at 7:57 PM.
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  #1639  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2021, 9:40 PM
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^ Existing double track doesn't mean much if the available capacity is already used by freight.
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  #1640  
Old Posted Apr 24, 2021, 4:47 AM
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^ Existing double track doesn't mean much if the available capacity is already used by freight.
It also doesn't help when the Class I's practice what they laughably call "precision scheduled railroading", which includes assembling freights so long that they cannot fully fit onto sidings to allow passenger trains to take advantage of the priority dispatching they are supposed to enjoy over freights, and also won't allow the passenger trains to use the sidings to race around the freights.

I am of the opinion that is largely by design, not happenstance.
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