In the wake of the Amtrak tragedy Democrats have been holding it up as an example of broken infrastructure and say we need to raise more taxes to invest into infrastructure like China does. Well perhaps if China did not have all of our manufacturing jobs we would have a local tax base that could pay for infrastructure and education. Only 14 Dem's bolted on Pacific trade bill that will lose more American jobs. Brilliant...just ******* brilliant.
Having lived the bulk of my career in the Northeast corridor, I love riding the Acela over flying when I can. Usually I few for time, but I did take the Acela many times.
However, government funding it is ridiculous. If it isn't economically viable, it should go away
OK fine... let's look at that from a different angle. The NE corridor parallels I95 which - as anyone who has to drive that road can tell you - has too many cars for too little road surface. On top of that, US Census data shows that every year we can expect the number of vehicles using that road to increase by around 2% due to population growth alone. Since it's a major route, more businesses have been placed in areas with quick access - which further congests it, especially in and around metro areas and burns millions of gallons of fuel every year just waiting for the traffic ahead to clear. I95 is a federal road, which means that when it falls into disrepair it's the government which funds it - and with more traffic than every hitting that roadway, it will fall into disrepair with greater regularity. There's a limit as to how wide you can make the road and the cost of widening will also fall on the government to fund. So, either way you look at it, the government is going to spend money... lots of it.
I think, if you look at it, transportation is in the national interest. Commuter rails have been proven not only to reduce the number of vehicles on the roads (if you don't believe that, try commuting from Oakland to San Francisco during a BART strike), but reduces oil consumption. And, if we're going to have to pay for transportation anyway, we should actually be looking to be efficient as possible and develop ways of getting around that has a much longer limit timeline.