• xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    Graft. Graft and incompetence.

    We’re funneling money into this bullshit while neglecting high speed rail.

    • GiuseppeAndTheYeti@midwest.social
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      6 months ago

      St. Louis to Chicago is a very, very flat 260 miles. To buy an Amtrak ticket it’s $36-43 and takes 5h.

      I’m traveling to Italy soon and a ticket from Genoa to Rome is €35, about the same distance between a sea front and a mountain range, and takes a whole hour less travel time.

      Amtrak is in desperate need of public funding and freight rail needs to be prosecuted for blatantly ignoring laws that give passenger trains the right of way on rails.

      • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        The rails need to be nationalized. Amtrak is no better suited to manage passenger rail transport than the freight rail companies.

    • anticolonialist@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      We sit here and dream of HSR while China has laid over 16k miles of rail since 2008. Here in Texas there’s been talk since 2010 and not a single rail laid

    • Dkarma@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The high speed rail the states keep rejecting the money the fed allocates to the rail projects? Wisconsin rejected 450mil the feds slated for rail lines there.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        A streamer I watched last night phrased it as very welcome but doesn’t come close to making up for over 100 years of neglect. This was in reference to the NEC, supposedly the best track for passenger rail, yet there are so many slowdowns, so many places bottlenecked by infrastructure from over 100 years ago falling apart, can’t meet current standards, was never intended for such scale.

      • GiuseppeAndTheYeti@midwest.social
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        6 months ago

        The US has over 160,000 miles of rail. That $6B is just $37,500 per mile and doesn’t take into account money needed to update/upgrade stations and crossings.

        • oxjox@lemmy.ml
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          6 months ago

          So, the word you want to use is insufficient. That is not the same as neglecting.

          • AA5B@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            100 years of neglect, and finally a very welcome but woefully inadequate $6B. We need many times that just to catch up on maintenence for existing slow rail, much less upgrade to handle higher soeeds

          • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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            6 months ago

            No, neglecting sounds extremely reasonable - the system has been consistently under invested into.