$4.5M per second ACELA upgrade

izafar

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-22/amtrak-acela-to-get-4-5m-per-second-upgrade.html

Going 160 miles per hour on that 24-mile segment compared with 135 mph would save about a minute and 40 seconds, meaning $4.5 million would be spent for each second of improvement.

txcoastal1

It's not a race to the moon....and still behind the ****'s and Euro's

Unless they need other upgrades dur to wear and tear....not worthy

Please tell me it not tax payer money

Jstas

txcoastal1 wrote: »

It's not a race to the moon....and still behind the ****'s and Euro's

Unless they need other upgrades dur to wear and tear....not worthy

Please tell me it not tax payer money

It says it in the article: "Grants from the U.S. Government"

Besides, it's Amtrak. Been publicly funded partially or wholly since it's inception in 1971. Where you been?

Upgrades "dur" to wear and tear? No, those would be repairs and maintenance.

A guy down in Galveston wouldn't understand what it's like in the Northeast Corridor. Think of L.A. traffic and infrastructure only spread out over an area the size of Kansas. Infrastructure up here is the oldest in the country and has long been inadequate to handle the needs of the population. The Acela runs from Boston to Washington D.C. and handles about 30 million passengers a year. Part of the reason it doesn't handle more is because at 135 MPH, it's slower than a plane and more costly in both finances and time.

Upping those speeds to 160-186 MPH like the article says changes things. Even if it's just one section of the line, the entire line needs to be upgraded. Whether you folks in other parts of the country think so or not. The upgrades have to start somewhere, might as well be NJ.

Besides, all of you keep bitching that we need to get off of foreign oil. Well, guess what. Car efficiency isn't going to do it. Public transportation is. Our public transportation system in the country sucks. If we want more people to use it, we need to fix it. High speed rail, higher capacity trains with higher levels of amenities and cheaper fares will bring more passengers. That's less people in cars and on planes sucking down dead dinosaurs from Arabia. Especially since the power needed to run these trains can be generated with U.S. based natural gas power plants.

Beyond that, I am GLAD to FINALLY see some of the federal tax money NJ forks over to the government that never comes back to the state. It all goes to the rest of the sucktastic states in union to fix what they screwed up. Meanwhile, NJ tax dollars go in to Federal infrastructure projects here all the time. Then they wonder why the state is in hock up to it's eyeballs and was facing imminent financial crisis a couple years ago.

I hope it goes through. I hope it upgrades the line and makes them upgrade the rest of it from Boston to D.C. I hope it brings tons of jobs with permanent and long term effects. I also hope it pisses off every other American in every other state whining about tax dollars that should be spent on trips to the moon when we can't even solve poverty in our own country. At least making a train run faster on a more efficient line is a step in the right direction to fixing what's wrong with this country.

Toxis

And people think there's a recession... I mean why else would we spend that kind of money to get a minute and 40 seconds back.

rebuy

Jstas wrote: »

It says it in the article: "Grants from the U.S. Government"

Besides, it's Amtrak. Been publicly funded partially or wholly since it's inception in 1971. Where you been?

Upgrades "dur" to wear and tear? No, those would be repairs and maintenance.

A guy down in Galveston wouldn't understand what it's like in the Northeast Corridor. Think of L.A. traffic and infrastructure only spread out over an area the size of Kansas. Infrastructure up here is the oldest in the country and has long been inadequate to handle the needs of the population. The Acela runs from Boston to Washington D.C. and handles about 30 million passengers a year. Part of the reason it doesn't handle more is because at 135 MPH, it's slower than a plane and more costly in both finances and time.

Upping those speeds to 160-186 MPH like the article says changes things. Even if it's just one section of the line, the entire line needs to be upgraded. Whether you folks in other parts of the country think so or not. The upgrades have to start somewhere, might as well be NJ.

Besides, all of you keep bitching that we need to get off of foreign oil. Well, guess what. Car efficiency isn't going to do it. Public transportation is. Our public transportation system in the country sucks. If we want more people to use it, we need to fix it. High speed rail, higher capacity trains with higher levels of amenities and cheaper fares will bring more passengers. That's less people in cars and on planes sucking down dead dinosaurs from Arabia. Especially since the power needed to run these trains can be generated with U.S. based natural gas power plants.

Beyond that, I am GLAD to FINALLY see some of the federal tax money NJ forks over to the government that never comes back to the state. It all goes to the rest of the sucktastic states in union to fix what they screwed up. Meanwhile, NJ tax dollars go in to Federal infrastructure projects here all the time. Then they wonder why the state is in hock up to it's eyeballs and was facing imminent financial crisis a couple years ago.

I hope it goes through. I hope it upgrades the line and makes them upgrade the rest of it from Boston to D.C. I hope it brings tons of jobs with permanent and long term effects. I also hope it pisses off every other American in every other state whining about tax dollars that should be spent on trips to the moon when we can't even solve poverty in our own country. At least making a train run faster on a more efficient line is a step in the right direction to fixing what's wrong with this country.

Oh, come on now, tell us what you really think.

tonyb

Jstas wrote: »

Besides, all of you keep bitching that we need to get off of foreign oil. Well, guess what. Car efficiency isn't going to do it. Public transportation is. Our public transportation system in the country sucks. If we want more people to use it, we need to fix it. High speed rail, higher capacity trains with higher levels of amenities and cheaper fares will bring more passengers. That's less people in cars and on planes sucking down dead dinosaurs from Arabia. Especially since the power needed to run these trains can be generated with U.S. based natural gas power plants.

John, we don't buy dead dinasaurs from Arabia dude. We don't have to buy oil from the middle east at all....because we frickin' have our own, if they would let us get it. Public transportation....trains ?? Get real, train ridership has been on the decline for decades, Going alittle faster won't change that.

Ever think about what a train going 180 mph would do at crossings if something was on the tracks ? Let alone the survival rate of all the passengers riding that missile ? You can multiply any number over a time line and get something palatable to sell the public, except it's B.S.

I'm all for infra structure improvements, within reason. That money could fix alot of bridges or highways on the east coast and still employ a heck of alot of people. Whatever is spent though on infrastructure, should have comparable cuts elsewhere so as to not add to our deficit.

jbooker82

What about buring everyone else oil. Then when runs out we still are sitting on our own stock pile.


You also cannot put a price on lost time since it cant be bought.

tonyb

I just hate the arguement that we have all this natural gas of our own to use as energy. We have our own oil too, so what makes anyone think they would let you go get all the natural gas you want ?

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/08/22/o-canada-the-greenies-are-on-the-attack/

Jstas

tonyb wrote: »

I just hate the arguement that we have all this natural gas of our own to use as energy. We have our own oil too, so what makes anyone think they would let you go get all the natural gas you want ?

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/08/22/o-canada-the-greenies-are-on-the-attack/

Never said they would give me all the natural gas *I* want. Said it was an option. They'll continue to use coal to fuel power plants and spend piles of money scrubbing the exhaust to clean it up instead of using alternatives that are as clean as the scrubbed coal exhaust is to begin with.

However, the U.S. does actually have massive NG reserves. Personally though, I couldn't care less. Oil is not the future. It's not even the present. Neither is NG. Corn is food, not a fuel source and we shouldn't be using crop land to grow fuel producing crops. We have the ability to grow so much food in this country that, for one thing, we have no excuse for having hungry mouths to feed in this country. For another thing, we could single handedly wipe out world hunger. Instead, we pay our farmers to do nothing. It's honestly a waste.

The future though? Hydrogen. It's a "miracle fuel". Extremely low, CLEAN emissions, similar power levels as petroleum based products and nothing is more abundant in our world. We should be funnelling all of our money and resources for fuel development in to hydrogen. What do we use instead? Garbage Toyotas with Nickel-metal hydride batteries where the entire manufacturing process burns more energy than the final product saves. Meanwhile turning the surrounding environment of every manufacturing point in the entire process in to a toxic waste land. But, you know, it's Toyota! They are AWESOME! Yeah, save that noise, I don't want to hear it.

The answers are not in an oil field. Losers on the Internet with snarky comments like "Tell us how you really feel" have no clue what kind of problems this country is facing. Money is not the problem. The problem is the people in powerful places servicing their own agendas. Tea-Party this, Democrats that...WHO CARES?!?!? It's a waste of time. We've let the banks run things, they screwed it up. Several times already. We've let the politicians run it and they have never gotten it right. We've let the lawyers run it and they just sued each other until they were blue in the face. The military? Pfft! Yeah, right. The ONLY ones who EVER get it right are the "know-it-all" scientists and engineers that have actually done the studies and found the answers. When are we going to let THEM have the chance?

Oh, that's right. We won't because even though all those "eggheads" have years of schooling, advanced degrees and decades worth of experience, we scoff at what they have to say. Why? Because our eyes or our ears or our noses tell us something different and well, you know, "they don't lie to us". Even though entire industries are built around the deception of those senses and exploiting their weaknesses. Hell, this very audio hobby we are so in to is based around the stereo phenomenon. It directly exploits an artifact in our hearing ability that is cause by the space between your ears occupied by your fat head and how the lump of jelly we call a brain interprets the mixed signals hitting our individual ears at different times. Polk Audio made a name with SDA for themselves TRICKING your brain by exploiting that hearing issue.

Give me my damn trains. I want new, modern trains. I'm tired of sending my tax dollars everywhere else and seeing assbag countries from Europe, Canada and Asia laughing at us because we'd rather give Italy a bunch of money to buy Chrysler to save Chrysler jobs in Mexico than spend it fixing our failing infrastructure. The train I ride to work every day is 45-50 years old. The tracks it runs on are 70 years old. The bridge it crosses every day is 90+ years old. I've actually heard German people sitting on the train and disparaging it in German because of how old it is. The trains break on a regular basis. They are cobbled together and falling apart. The only other option I have is to drive. Driving would cost me a grand a month in parking, tolls and gas. The train costs me $140.

Stop spending money on oil reserves and fix the infrastructure so I'm not sitting in traffic for an average of 3 hours a day. Fix the roads so I'm not wearing out tires and suspension components needlessly. Fix the roads so my car's suspension can be tuned for efficient operation instead of a squishy ride to soak up the bumps from failing infrastructure. You know how much oil would be saved by just solving the traffic problems due to horrid infrastructure in this country? We'd need 0 gallons of foreign oil. It'd bankrupt the oil companies over night and drive oil prices through the floor. Right now, 1/3rd of the fuel in my tank is burned generating power to run the radio so I can listen to how bad the traffic tie up is. How stupid is that?

We, as Americans, are great at identifying problems and grabbing on to them tenaciously until we fix them. That's a GREAT character trait to have! Well, it is if you fix the right problem instead of solving the symptom.

tonyb

You can wish all you want John, but alternative fuels won't become mainline until the oil has run out. The problem in your area isn't so much the infrastructure, it's that there are just too many people.Don't want to spend time in traffic jams ? Get a job closer to home. That way you can ride your bike and not spend a nickel on an oil based product. Oh wait, you probably make more money at the job that requires you to sit in traffic jams, right ? Companies do the same thing, they sell what they can make money on and if they thought money could be had right now in alternative fuels, they'd be on it like Pigs on sh$t.
Politicians spend money on what gets them votes,period. Is it right ? No, but until you change the mindset, it will always be that way. Why do you think they keep spending money re-doing the same roads every couple years while a bridge 2 blocks away is falling apart ? Roadwork employs more people, and pleases the unions, and is a more visible sign to voters that your doing good for the general public....so they think anyway.

Spending billions,trillions even on a faster rail system is money down the toilet. Not one rail system has seen an increase in ridership over the years. Newer and faster trains won't change that and the states will be left with their own Amtrak to subsidize with taxpayer money, Translation is another money pit of public funds. It may help you in your own personal situation but the bigger picture says it's a loser in the end. This country is not China where you have huge amounts of people that most can't afford a car. Kinda like moving slave labor around. Though we may be headed in that direction if the job scene and economy don't turn around.
Maybe it would be more prudent, for the time being anyway, to ask why what we have now costs so much, or why jobs are not available closer to you. Surely there are steps that can be taken to reduce the costs of gasoline, the costs of cars,insurance, and so forth. Steps can be taken to spur job growth so that maybe one would be available closer for you, but that doesn't involve spending trillions of dollars.

All I'm saying is look at what could be done by your elected officials to make life easier without raising your taxes, whats standing in the way that can be eliminated to reduce the burden on the general public and make life easier for everyone.

markmarc

Whether we like it or not, it's time we focus on rebuilding the infrastructure. Between good engineering and patch jobs we've managed to doubled the life of much of it. But as we all have noticed or experienced it's time to rebuild.

But...how do we pay for it?

I firmly believe that 25% of the projected costs could be eliminated by removing the onerous and silly regulations that delay and extend construction time. Of course, back east especially, the "Soprano Tax" to the mob makes things worse.

Here in Portland the Fed's have ordered that we cover 5 small in-city water reservoirs to the tune of $400 million. All the while, we have two road bridges that are desperately in need of replacement, but lack funding.

**The good news is that thru Sen. Chuck Schumer's (D-NY) successful prodding of the EPA to reverse its decision to force NYC to cover its Hillview reservoir for $1.6 billion, Portland may get the same exclusion.**

drselect

Jstas wrote: »

. Driving would cost me a grand a month in parking, tolls and gas. The train costs me $140.

I am not an economist but based on your numbers they might want to think about raising the price of tickets to help pay for the needed changes. Even if they tripled the price your currently pay you would still be saving money.

Jstas

tonyb wrote: »

Not one rail system has seen an increase in ridership over the years.

The northeast corridor lines have seen ridership increase to "record levels" every year for the past 5 years. Ridership across Amtrak entirely went from about 19 million people a year in 2000 to 28 million by 2008. Since 2008, the numbers are around 32-35 million a year.

Hell, my local PATCO line hovered around 7-8 million passengers a year. In 2002, ridership started increasing steadily by about 1.1 million riders a year. Now, it handles about 14 million riders a year as of 2010. That's DOUBLED in 8 years.


I don't need the job to be closer to me. That's more BS. I need the trip to the job to be easier. Just this past couple of years, the gubment decided to widen I295 south of Exit 32. It's been woefully needed since as long as I've been alive. The road was in horrible condition as well. Did they add another lane? Nope. They made the shoulder wider so emergency vehicles to get to accidents faster and alleviate the backups they cause. You know how many times a year an accident causes a backup in that area? About 10. You know how many times a year traffic congestion from cramming 5 lanes worth of traffic in to 3 creates a backup that is 11 miles long? About 260. You know how long it takes to get from Mt. Laurel, where I used to work, to my house, 14.4 miles away? 20 minutes with no traffic. Know how long with traffic? 1 hour 12 minutes. Could I move closer to that job? Yeah but see, property values up there put those houses out of my reach financially. So no, I can't move closer because even though I was paid well, I wasn't paid enough to live closer. So I get to spend hours of my life, daily, stuck in traffic on inadequate roadways in complete disrepair listening to assbags on the radio talk about how we should be sending monkeys to the moon.

You keep making excuses by telling me things won't change because of yada yada yada. That's bunk. We don't need politicians to change things. We can do it without them. It is a "free market" after all, isn't it? Political agendas shouldn't matter. You know the REAL reason no one has bought in to alternative fuels? Because NOBODY has made anything worth a damn that allows us to continue things the way they are now. We don't need a choice, we need a replacement for oil. Electric cars, hybrids, ethanol, none of it works.

There are only 2 companies that have anything worth while. Well, one company now because the American tax payer made it difficult for Ford to ignore the hybrid BS and continue it's hydrogen fuel cell development. Now, Honda and it's Clarity FCX are all that's left. Ever see one? Probably not 'cause so many of you are so stuck on your outdated views of the automotive world that you can't see past your own, misguided misconceptions to give anything other than whatever company has brainwashed you half a chance. I got a chance to drive a Clarity several years ago at the L.A. Autoshow while I was traveling for Lockheed. Ford had a concept with a hydrogen fuel cell that was easier to refuel than the Honda but both were amazing. They used an alternative fuel choice that had all the power and mileage of a gasoline car with none of the drawbacks of any other alternative fuel. I could drive the Clarity today in this environment if hydrogen was made available at service stations everywhere. It could fit in to my life and completely replace my Lincoln without a hiccup. THAT is the solution we need. Not Turdota Priuses and other hybrid garbage and CERTAINLY not that **** nozzle Elon Musk and his **** canoe the Tesla Roadster.

Sadly, Ford abandoned their promising plans for an innovative hydrogen fuel cell idea in favor of hybrids which they could build and sell cheaper to pad the bottom line. Why? Because our economy is run by people who don't care about the consequences of their actions as long as the number of zeros behind the first number in that bottom line figure keep increasing. We favor instant profits and instant wealth over long term solutions that benefit society in general but produce a more gradual and longer term profit margin.

I don't care what you think about the politics and agendas. It's just excuses. Technology is the answer. The biggest problem we have is that while we *might* have people to think about it, we have no way to build it. Why? Because of what I mentioned earlier about profit margins. We shipped all of our manufacturing expertise out of the country 'cause it was cheaper, cut costs and boosted profit margins. Now we whine and blame our politicians for enabling it all. Guess what? That's BS too. WE, as a country, LET IT HAPPEN. Our excuse? "There's no such thing as "American Made" anymore!" Why did we make that excuse? Because, apparently, the vast majority of us decided to putz around with our puds in our high school level economics classes instead of actually understanding how this economy we live in works. Despite what the "global market analysts" tell us, American Made MATTERS! BTW, those "global market analysts"? Yeah, when they start talking about the price of tea in China and how it relates to the U.S. Economy (it doesn't, really unless you are discussing how it's crushing us), they make a bundle of money off of the news that THEY CREATE which then positively affects the commodities trading China where they are heavily invested. yeah, we let it happen because we allowed our jerkoff kids to slack off in school, get barely passing grades and decided that they all get P's for participation instead of telling them they suck at life and holding them back until they can figure out how not to be a colossal ****. Now we have to fix it and since we outsourced ALL of THAT too, we need to start over.

Blaming the politicians gets us no where. We built this country as a bunch of doers. Now we're a bunch of thinkers and, apparently, whiners. You want to know what made "The Greatest Generation" so great? It wasn't courage, it wasn't standing up to evil and all that happy heroic crap. It was much more simple than that. Someone would come up with a good idea and they would DO IT. They wouldn't argue about the idea. They wouldn't hold competitions to see whose idea worked best. They just did it. If it failed, dang it, oh well, try something else. If it succeeded, OMG! That was friggin' awesome! Let's do it again!

Now, we blame the politicians and divide ourselves along party lines because well, hippies think we should spread the wealth while the wealthy, who worked hard for their money and most deserve every red cent of it get indignant that the slack-**** hippies want to take it from them and give it to some bum on the corner prattling on about how he's been kept down by "the man". Half want to tax us in to oblivion, the other half want to damn near abolish the government. There's never a happy medium anymore. All any of them talk about is the erosion of the middle class but never give a solution. Again, not the answer.

We need to stop questioning the smart people. We need to stop listening to the snake oil salesmen. We need to impress upon the idiots of this world that the math and science classes were important in high school so you could understand things like statistics and what an actual physical impossibility is. The English classes were important too so that when you are asking the smart people questions they don't hear "Durr, hurr durrhurrdurr durrr duuuurrr ddurr!" coming out of your mouth and dismiss you as a waste of time. Then we wouldn't have people tell us that they'll never buy an American car again because their uncle had nothing but problems with his 1973 LTD station wagon. We wouldn't have "The Wire Debate" either. Hell, we wouldn't have millions of people putting the country in jeopardy of a deadly measles outbreak because we listened to Jenny McCarthy about autism and the non-existent link to a preservative INSTEAD OF the various government agencies and health organizations that said the devastation of a measles outbreak far out-weighs any possible (but non-existent) correlation between autism and medication preservatives.

But, you know, it's not cool to be smart. Meanwhile, all the stupid people **** up a storm that the rest of the world doesn't take us seriously. Well, guess what cool kids? Know why the rest of the world doesn't take you seriously? 'cause high school is over and the rest of the world is full of the smart kids now and they think you're silly. And you know what? They're right. Why don't we all try this. I know, it's a novel idea but hey, might just work! Try LEARNING something and ACTUALLY BEING SMART instead of faking it on the Internet and still **** up a Google search while regurgitating what you heard on MSNBC last night?

Imagine what we could do if we stopped ignoring the smart people and applied ourselves again? The politics wouldn't even matter because the "free market" would have spoke with it's collective wallet since it's collective vote has fallen on deaf ears.

Jstas

drselect wrote: »

I am not an economist but based on your numbers they might want to think about raising the price of tickets to help pay for the needed changes. Even if they tripled the price your currently pay you would still be saving money.

They did. That's the increase rate.

tonyb

Jstas wrote: »

Blaming the politicians gets us no where. We built this country as a bunch of doers. Now we're a bunch of thinkers and, apparently, whiners. You want to know what made "The Greatest Generation" so great? It wasn't courage, it wasn't standing up to evil and all that happy heroic crap. It was much more simple than that. Someone would come up with a good idea and they would DO IT. They wouldn't argue about the idea. They wouldn't hold competitions to see whose idea worked best. They just did it. If it failed, dang it, oh well, try something else. If it succeeded, OMG! That was friggin' awesome! Let's do it again!

Imagine what we could do if we stopped ignoring the smart people and applied ourselves again? The politics wouldn't even matter because the "free market" would have spoke with it's collective wallet since it's collective vote has fallen on deaf ears.

Yeah John, we did build this country as a bunch of doers, but the doers today are hesitant to take that risk, stick their neck out. Why ? Fear, not convinced of a stable economy, liquidity in the banking systems, consumer spending at all time lows, not to mention the costs of doing buisness has gone up, healthcare costs, new taxes on the horizon, and a world market that has a dim outlook, tons of new regulations on buisnesses. Why should they do anything if they can't make x amount of money ? Society ?? Please John, corporate america can give a rats **** about society. They are not in buisness to make you feel good, thats what a politician is for. They are in buisness to make money, not loose it.
The markets do speak with their collective wallets, and so do consumers, and right now, buisness is saying that the ability to turn a profit in alternative fuels sucks. While the consumer is saying they will not spend any money on alternative fuels unless you show them it will be cheaper than gas and give equal results. Forget the whole green crap, whats better for society B.S., BECAUSE WE ARE DRIVEN BY MONEY, If people won't buy it, you can't sell it, and nobody makes a profit....done, move on to the next alternative fuel.

I've said this before and I'll say it again, you will not see a legitimate alternative fuel untill big oil, and Washington controlls it, taxes it, distributes it, then forces you to buy it. In that order too. We are a money driven society,as I said, and the money from big oil flowing into washington isn't helping alternative fuels. Get rid of the lobbyists, stop the flow of money,and all this changes. You would have a more diverse menu of fuels. Stop the flow of money, and alot of regulations would go by the wayside to open up expansion and growth in the buisness community.

You can say all you want about politics being B.S., but the fact is, politicians pull the strings on the economy. They create the environment to grow, or to shrink. Smart people, as you hold in such high esteem, know this, Wall Street knows this, top CEO's know this,the world knows this. Maybe best you try and take your own advice and listen to the "smart people" who know politics plays a big part in where money gets invested.

Science on the other hand is a double edged sword. While science is invaluable to all we know, it can be manipulated to reach a desired end result.

My own observations over the period of my lifetime lead me to believe that the more free the people are, the more that gets done, the doers as you say, shine like no tomarrow. If the "doers" are disappearing, that only means our society has become less free. My.02 anyway.