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Florida scraps high-speed rail plan pushed by Obama

whysoserious said:
NYC's transit system is great. I use it everytime I go to the city and I used it to get into the city when I lived in New Jersey.
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It's ugly, it smells, and needs serious maintenance. The system has basically not expanded at all since the government took it over, in fact it has only shrunk. Only recently has the government decided to expand it, despite serious overcrowding on the entire system.
 
Ikari said:
New York transit is a bit different than national high speed rail.
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This has no bearing on the validity of the analogy.
 
Ikari said:
That's not true. Lots of things can be benefitial yet not turn a profit. Our military doesn't turn a profit, yet it is beneficial to have it. High speed rail doesn't need to be profitable to provide service and benefit to the People at large. It merely has to exist and be used.
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And the railroads that crisscrossed much of the country before the Civil War? Who financed that?
 
Kandahar said:
There is no way that the builder of a private road could reap the benefits, short of installing a toll booth at every intersection...which would be horrendously inefficient from a societal/economic perspective. Government provides the service because it is unprofitable, not the other way around.
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That argument is a red herring. There are electronic toll booths that do everything with you even having to slow down.

They could, but the fact that they haven't should indicate that it isn't profitable for private enterprise to do so.

Virtually nothing the government does is profitable, yet I'm sure that there are certain government functions you believe benefit society? To illustrate my point, some hypothetical numbers:

COSTS:
To the entity that builds it: $50 billion
To the customers who use it: $10 billion (perhaps some modest user fees)

BENEFITS:
To the entity that builds it: $10 billion
To the customers who use it: $200 billion

These numbers are just an example so don't read anything into them, but my point is that the overall economic benefits of something can considerably outweigh the overall economic costs, without it being profitable for the entity who does it.
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That's why companies try to internalize the external benefits that they create, like the example I used of a parking lot surrounding a baseball stadium. The reason that private companies aren't building these things is because they have subsidized comeptition, and who can compete against that?
 
VanceMack said:
Your logic would have AMTRAK being well used and profitable. Not picking an argument...just sayin. From what I have read there is like 1 line in the whole country that manages to pay for itself and its a connecting train from NYC to Connecticut. Its not that the rail system isnt in place...no one uses it. Building a dramatically more expensive (albeit faster) version is no guarantee it is going to be any less of an albatross.
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No...the problem with Amtrak is that the rail system isn't in place. It's merely a token, pork-barrel rail system. Passenger trains must travel at slow speeds per FRA regulations, passenger trains are preempted by freight trains all the time so that on-time performance is abysmal, the destinations are not ideal (Emeryville instead of San Francisco, etc.), few trains/day (usually one in each direction), poor hours of operation (if you want to go from Cincinnati to DC, your only train leaves at 3:29 AM), poor route choice (North Dakota's rail line (and interstates) are pork), etc.

As you can see, it really isn't a functioning system. HSR on the other hand runs on dedicated tracks so trains are never preempted, run many trains/day at regular intervals, ideally connect downtown to downtown (San Francisco Transbay Tower to LA Union Station via downtowns in San Jose, Fresno, Bakersfield) and feed into airports (SFO, Ontario), and are only meant for high volume transport corridors. The comparison is like contrasting the QE2 with the raft from Castaway.
 
TitusAndronicus said:
No...the problem with Amtrak is that the rail system isn't in place. It's merely a token, pork-barrel rail system. Passenger trains must travel at slow speeds per FRA regulations, passenger trains are preempted by freight trains all the time so that on-time performance is abysmal, the destinations are not ideal (Emeryville instead of San Francisco, etc.), few trains/day (usually one in each direction), poor hours of operation (if you want to go from Cincinnati to DC, your only train leaves at 3:29 AM), poor route choice (North Dakota's rail line (and interstates) are pork), etc.
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But money is still being poured down the Amtrak drain even though it's an obvious loss to society. Any private comapny would have stopped trying decades ago as they should since it is a waste of resources.

As you can see, it really isn't a functioning system. HSR on the other hand runs on dedicated tracks so trains are never preempted, run many trains/day at regular intervals, ideally connect downtown to downtown (San Francisco Transbay Tower to LA Union Station via downtowns in San Jose, Fresno, Bakersfield) and feed into airports (SFO, Ontario), and are only meant for high volume transport corridors. The comparison is like contrasting the QE2 with the raft from Castaway.
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Potentially it is useful. I just don't believe that government has the ability to decide where it would be most useful and where it would not. They have no concept of profit and loss and needing to make a budget. Profit ensures that we do not waste valuable resources.
 
phattonez said:
See the Route 91 Express Lanes which were built even though there was heavy government competition from route 91. Private companies can and do take up huge projects all the time.

91 Express Lanes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

After all, it was private companies that built the subway system in New York, not the government.
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That is a 10 mile road, and isn't it owned by the government? That linked said it was owned by Orange County Transportation Authority. Regardless, 10 miles is not a "huge project" on the scale of highway development and maintenance. There's 1000 miles of interstate between Colorado and Illinois, that's just I-80 and just in that section, it goes on further. That one section of that one interstate is already 100 times greater in scale than that of the Route 91 Express Lanes.

phattonez said:
The bulk of actual scientific research is performed in government labs because government provides a ton of money such that the profit of private investment is severely compromised. Private companies tend to piggy-back off of the research done in government labs. However, it's interesting to note that most of the supplies used in those labs comes from private companies.
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It's preformed in government labs and academia because government is the only entity with the time scales and pocketbook necessary to perform the aggregated volume of scientific research necessary to maintain and proliferate the growing technical needs of our society. Private companies can and do invest, they're ability to do so is in no way, shape, or form compromised. If Agilent wanted to give me 500,000 bucks for research, they can. But they don't, because they have little interest in quantum computing. The government, on the other hand, has HUGE interest in it. Society cannot advance through stagnation, and technologically developed and advanced cultures like our own need continual input of new technologies to continue moving forward. The private sector does piggy back incredibly hard off of that research. And that's the point. The research is not necessarily profitable to government itself. But government is the only entity capable of supporting the entire aggregated system. Private sector then reaps huge benefits from it, even though the the government investment may not reap profit.

We buy all our stuff from private industry. There's no government company for laser frequency doublers or acusto-optical modulators. I buy those from private companies. But guess where they got that technology from? That's right, it's all formed from base scientific research. Some poor grad student spends his career and post-doc messing with something, say ring lasers or dye lasers or doublers, whatever. After he/she is done, they can (and many do) go off and start a start-up to start making commercially available products for academia. But their input to research is perfecting the already established technology and engineering a practical, commercial use. It's not the broad band experimentation necessary to find and understand this phenomenon in the first place. And it's expensive. I just bought 4 lenses, 1" by 1", little cylindrical lenses for UV (221 nm) lasers. Each lens was over 500 bucks a piece. I should be in the AR coating business for sure!

But this is part of the point. People say that government should run like a business, but it's not true. Government should run like a government. There are things that government can do well and things that it can't. The same with private enterprise. Those things are different. So government can provide something, it doesn't even need to be profitable because government can survive long time periods without being profitable (unlike business). But because it can do this, it can invest in things business cannot. Business can then pick it up on the other end and find ways to make, in this case, commercial products for sale. The two entities then feed off of each other. If you set the fail conditions of government to be the same as the fail conditions of business, then you will find yourself in a situation when government itself fails from not being profitable. Then we're really up ****'s creek without a paddle. Government needs to operate like government, business needs to operate like business. And the synergy between the two creates a wealth of benefits for us on whole.
 
phattonez said:
And the railroads that crisscrossed much of the country before the Civil War? Who financed that?
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Robber barrens. Which no longer exist. Which is why it cannot be done anymore. There used to be Bell Labs too, it was a base scientific, private research facility. It was funded through the phone monopoly held by Bell. But once that monopoly was broken up, they couldn't support the lab anymore. The lab went bye bye.
 
Ikari said:
That is a 10 mile road, and isn't it owned by the government? That linked said it was owned by Orange County Transportation Authority. Regardless, 10 miles is not a "huge project" on the scale of highway development and maintenance. There's 1000 miles of interstate between Colorado and Illinois, that's just I-80 and just in that section, it goes on further. That one section of that one interstate is already 100 times greater in scale than that of the Route 91 Express Lanes.
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It's owned now by the OCTA, but was originally built and run by a private company. Larger projects are harder to come by (though there are decent-lengthed tunnels in Australia and France that I'm aware of) because government pretty much has a monopoly on interstates because they have so little demand compared to intra-city roads and they are subsidized so much.

It's preformed in government labs and academia because government is the only entity with the time scales and pocketbook necessary to perform the aggregated volume of scientific research necessary to maintain and proliferate the growing technical needs of our society. Private companies can and do invest, they're ability to do so is in no way, shape, or form compromised. If Agilent wanted to give me 500,000 bucks for research, they can. But they don't, because they have little interest in quantum computing. The government, on the other hand, has HUGE interest in it. Society cannot advance through stagnation, and technologically developed and advanced cultures like our own need continual input of new technologies to continue moving forward. The private sector does piggy back incredibly hard off of that research. And that's the point. The research is not necessarily profitable to government itself. But government is the only entity capable of supporting the entire aggregated system. Private sector then reaps huge benefits from it, even though the the government investment may not reap profit.
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Celera Corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - This is the non-government entity that also sequenced the human genome, but at a tremendous fraction of the cost and much faster.

We buy all our stuff from private industry. There's no government company for laser frequency doublers or acusto-optical modulators. I buy those from private companies. But guess where they got that technology from? That's right, it's all formed from base scientific research. Some poor grad student spends his career and post-doc messing with something, say ring lasers or dye lasers or doublers, whatever. After he/she is done, they can (and many do) go off and start a start-up to start making commercially available products for academia. But their input to research is perfecting the already established technology and engineering a practical, commercial use. It's not the broad band experimentation necessary to find and understand this phenomenon in the first place. And it's expensive. I just bought 4 lenses, 1" by 1", little cylindrical lenses for UV (221 nm) lasers. Each lens was over 500 bucks a piece. I should be in the AR coating business for sure!
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Great, but so what? Your'e not proving that private companies cannot do this.

But this is part of the point. People say that government should run like a business, but it's not true. Government should run like a government. There are things that government can do well and things that it can't. The same with private enterprise. Those things are different. So government can provide something, it doesn't even need to be profitable because government can survive long time periods without being profitable (unlike business). But because it can do this, it can invest in things business cannot. Business can then pick it up on the other end and find ways to make, in this case, commercial products for sale. The two entities then feed off of each other. If you set the fail conditions of government to be the same as the fail conditions of business, then you will find yourself in a situation when government itself fails from not being profitable. Then we're really up ****'s creek without a paddle. Government needs to operate like government, business needs to operate like business. And the synergy between the two creates a wealth of benefits for us on whole.
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But government cannot decide what is profitable and what is not. Government, on the whole, is a tremendous waste of resources because of this.
 
phattonez said:
It's owned now by the OCTA, but was originally built and run by a private company. Larger projects are harder to come by (though there are decent-lengthed tunnels in Australia and France that I'm aware of) because government pretty much has a monopoly on interstates because they have so little demand compared to intra-city roads and they are subsidized so much.
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These things tend to be funded by government. Government can hire private companies to build stuff for them if necessary. But the point remains, they could not build and maintain by their own finances alone the infrastructure necessary to create something on the order of the national interstate system we currently have. Only government is long term stable enough, and isolated from profit concerns well enough to construct such a large, aggregated system.

phattonez said:
Celera Corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - This is the non-government entity that also sequenced the human genome, but at a tremendous fraction of the cost and much faster.
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And without base scientific research leading up to the point of being able to identify genomes, the technology necessary to do so, etc. they could not have done it. For them to pick up that very specialized and limited field, there was a wealth of money and effort that went before it to get to the point where a company can pick up that specialized field.

phattonez said:
Great, but so what? Your'e not proving that private companies cannot do this.
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They can't do it. Scientific research takes years, decades, even more sometimes to net out information. Private industry cannot operate on that time scale without profit. Government can. Which is why government does it and private industry does not.

phattonez said:
But government cannot decide what is profitable and what is not. Government, on the whole, is a tremendous waste of resources because of this.
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We gain a lot of benefit from them doing so. Do you like your cell phone? You know where it came from? Sure, once transistors were figured out, transmission of radiation understood, computing technology necessary for cell technology a private company took over and invested time and research into developing cell phones as a consumer product. But it didn't poof into existence. The base research needed to get to that point was tremendous. Some of that research panned out, some didn't. But we do not have the benefit of hindsight when making these decisions for funding.

The end is the same. Scientific research is a net HUGE plus for all of us. We all derive benefit from engaging in it. But it is not necessarily profitable, and it's on time scales far too long for any private company to consider. Yet even without it being profitable, it provides massive benefits to us all. That is why government is government and business is business.

I understand the underlying philosophy of thinking government should be more responsible and more "business like". But all those underlying premises fall victim to fallacy of aggregation. You can think of specialized cases when this can work out better for private industry. But if you aggregate it over the whole, and see the system for what it is; it becomes obvious that private business cannot support this. It can only be supported by something with functionally infinite pockets and infinite time; that is government.
 
Ikari said:
These things tend to be funded by government. Government can hire private companies to build stuff for them if necessary. But the point remains, they could not build and maintain by their own finances alone the infrastructure necessary to create something on the order of the national interstate system we currently have. Only government is long term stable enough, and isolated from profit concerns well enough to construct such a large, aggregated system.
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The New York subway system was a long term, stable infrastructure system that worked quite well until it was taken over. And there were interstate railways long before the interstate highway system was started, and these were both done by private companies. Why are you ignoring these facts?

And without base scientific research leading up to the point of being able to identify genomes, the technology necessary to do so, etc. they could not have done it. For them to pick up that very specialized and limited field, there was a wealth of money and effort that went before it to get to the point where a company can pick up that specialized field.
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You're only pointing to the situation, you are not proving that without government that it would not have been able to reach that stage in research.

They can't do it. Scientific research takes years, decades, even more sometimes to net out information. Private industry cannot operate on that time scale without profit. Government can. Which is why government does it and private industry does not.
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Private companies don't build anything on such a long time scale? Do you know how long it took for the Dulles Greenway to open after investments were acquired? What about the First Transcontinental Railroad? There are plenty of examples out there of companies investing in things that take a long time to be profitable. You just have to open your eyes to see them.

We gain a lot of benefit from them doing so. Do you like your cell phone? You know where it came from? Sure, once transistors were figured out, transmission of radiation understood, computing technology necessary for cell technology a private company took over and invested time and research into developing cell phones as a consumer product. But it didn't poof into existence. The base research needed to get to that point was tremendous. Some of that research panned out, some didn't. But we do not have the benefit of hindsight when making these decisions for funding.

The end is the same. Scientific research is a net HUGE plus for all of us. We all derive benefit from engaging in it. But it is not necessarily profitable, and it's on time scales far too long for any private company to consider. Yet even without it being profitable, it provides massive benefits to us all. That is why government is government and business is business.

I understand the underlying philosophy of thinking government should be more responsible and more "business like". But all those underlying premises fall victim to fallacy of aggregation. You can think of specialized cases when this can work out better for private industry. But if you aggregate it over the whole, and see the system for what it is; it becomes obvious that private business cannot support this. It can only be supported by something with functionally infinite pockets and infinite time; that is government.
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Blah blah blah, all you do is point out government innovations, but you have done NOTHING to prove that these things would not have happened without government funding.

By the way, governments do not have infinite pockets and infinite time. Scarcity is a reality for governments and corporations alike.
 
Kandahar said:
But the notion of "paying for itself" or "being profitable" is a red herring, because that's not the point of government services. The point of government services is to provide a benefit to society. I do not know if other AMTRAK routes provide enough of an economic benefit to society to justify their costs...but I do know that you can't measure that strictly by looking at the government's balance sheets.
A faster train would have more demand, because highway travel would no longer be viewed as a cheaper substitute.
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I hate to be a killjoy...but that government service mentality is unsustainable. Its getting worse not better daily. The projected cost for a rail system from Orlando to Tampa is 3 billion. Thats a grand total of 85 miles. My calculator started smoking when I extrapolated costs across the country for major hubs. TAXPAYERS have to foot that bill...and for most part we arent talking about taxpayers that would or even could use the service. Pick a line...what do you want to do...New York to LA? Stops in...what...5 major cities along the way? At what cost? Im sorry...but unless you can come up with a way to pay for it that doesnt add a few trillion to the debt and maintenance cost for future decades...what are we even talking about?
 
VanceMack said:
My calculator started smoking when I extrapolated costs across the country for major hubs. TAXPAYERS have to foot that bill...
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Have you ever heard the expression, "You have to spend money to make money"?

There is no question that high speed rail would stimulate the Florida economy (the 4th largest state economy in the country) so much it would recoup its cost pdq. Florida is stagnating because of sprawl, and high speed rail is the solution. Your argument is like refusing to buy medicine because you are saving for retirement.
 
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Guy Incognito said:
Have you ever heard the expression, "You have to spend money to make money"?

There is no question that high speed rail would stimulate the Florida economy (the 4th largest state economy in the country) so much it would recoup its cost pdq. Florida is stagnating because of sprawl, and high speed rail is the solution. Your argument is like refusing to buy medicine because you are saving for retirement.
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But is it worth the resources? And you know that government will screw it up with bloated contracts, cost overruns, etc. This government control of transportation needs to end. They have failed miserably by any measure.
 
And as for companies not being able to take on long-term projects, ask yourself how long your home loan is for. Someone must have put up the money for something that won't be repaid for 10, 20, 30 years. That's a very long-term investment, yet private companies do it ALL THE TIME. And it's not just homes either. The amount of money in these types of bonds must be astronomical.
 
VanceMack said:
Pick a line...what do you want to do...New York to LA? Stops in...what...5 major cities along the way? At what cost?
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Just so you know, New York to LA would never be considered. HSR is being considered over corridors between major cities where it can compete with flying (< 4 hours by rail). Actual considered routes:

San Francisco/Sacramento - Los Angeles - San Diego

Portland - Seattle - Vancouver

Chicago Hub: lines to St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland/Detroit, Minneapolis

Boston - New York - Philadelphia - Washington

Tampa - Orlando - Miami

Texas "T-bone": T-shaped line connecting Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston

Transcontinental routes are being considered by no one. Even Chicago - New York is too far for HSR to be feasible.
 
phattonez said:
And as for companies not being able to take on long-term projects, ask yourself how long your home loan is for. Someone must have put up the money for something that won't be repaid for 10, 20, 30 years. That's a very long-term investment, yet private companies do it ALL THE TIME. And it's not just homes either. The amount of money in these types of bonds must be astronomical.
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One home. OK, you're still falling to the fallacy of aggregation. Companies can borrow large amounts of money, but a company must make money to remain a company (or get bailed out by the government, it seems to be a particularly popular pastime these days). Scientific research exists on a monetary and temporal scale which is out of reach of companies on the base scientific level. Not everything pans out to a profitable product. Hell even pharmaceutical companies have problems with this. They spend tons of money on research and not all (most in fact) drugs pan out and are able to be marketed towards consumers. And that's a very specific and isolated field of study. And it still wouldn't exist without the base funding provided by government. A company must post earnings, if it doesn't it will begin to lose money, it's stocks can fall, and it can go belly up. The government does not tend to go belly up if it doesn't post profits for several quarters. The government is stable over the time time scales and has the aggregated monetary power at hand to take care of the aggregated system at large. Base scientific study is necessary, but let's face it; it's not all marketable. Nor does it all end up the way people envision it will when they start. Still, there is necessity for it because there is a lot of high end benefit we reap by continually investigating base science.

Companies exist in a different world than government. Because of it, they have different concerns and needs. These concerns and needs make it incredibly impractical for investing into base scientific research. It may be able to happen in specialized areas with isolated companies; but on the whole it cannot exist in that manner. Without government funding, base scientific research would not be funded at the level it needs to be funded at in order to continually pull the benefits we all extract from the system.
 
Ikari said:
One home. OK, you're still falling to the fallacy of aggregation.
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One home? The average home price in 2008 (from what I can find) was $292,600. There are 129.4 million homes. $37,862,440,000,000 invested in homes. It's an overestimate, $32 trillion is much higher than what is actually invested in homes, but consider that there are also investments in commercial properties and other kinds of bonds and you have a tremendous amount of money invested in bonds that will not mature sometimes for decades. Yet it is done on a tremendous scale. So let's throw away your time-scale argument for good now.

Companies can borrow large amounts of money, but a company must make money to remain a company (or get bailed out by the government, it seems to be a particularly popular pastime these days). Scientific research exists on a monetary and temporal scale which is out of reach of companies on the base scientific level. Not everything pans out to a profitable product. Hell even pharmaceutical companies have problems with this. They spend tons of money on research and not all (most in fact) drugs pan out and are able to be marketed towards consumers. And that's a very specific and isolated field of study. And it still wouldn't exist without the base funding provided by government. A company must post earnings, if it doesn't it will begin to lose money, it's stocks can fall, and it can go belly up. The government does not tend to go belly up if it doesn't post profits for several quarters. The government is stable over the time time scales and has the aggregated monetary power at hand to take care of the aggregated system at large. Base scientific study is necessary, but let's face it; it's not all marketable. Nor does it all end up the way people envision it will when they start. Still, there is necessity for it because there is a lot of high end benefit we reap by continually investigating base science.

Companies exist in a different world than government. Because of it, they have different concerns and needs. These concerns and needs make it incredibly impractical for investing into base scientific research. It may be able to happen in specialized areas with isolated companies; but on the whole it cannot exist in that manner. Without government funding, base scientific research would not be funded at the level it needs to be funded at in order to continually pull the benefits we all extract from the system.
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Who's to say it wouldn't work for research? The easy way to do it would be to diversify. Don't just be a research company, also make money from other places. A company that engineers buildings and other things could take some of its profit and divert that to research and development. Why couldn't this work on a large scale? The incentive would be huge since the profits would be immeasurable.
 
Guy Incognito said:
Have you ever heard the expression, "You have to spend money to make money"?

There is no question that high speed rail would stimulate the Florida economy (the 4th largest state economy in the country) so much it would recoup its cost pdq. Florida is stagnating because of sprawl, and high speed rail is the solution. Your argument is like refusing to buy medicine because you are saving for retirement.
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Oh dear lord...

Im all about spending money to make money. We are talking about laying down 86 MILES OF TRACK. At a cost of 3 billion dollars. And a bullet train from Orlando to Tampa helps tourism how exactly?

Seriously...help me understand how much this is going to cost to implement on a nationwide scale where it might be effective for people to use. I simply cannot fathom people are buying into this just because the president said it would be a good idea. So...give me something more to work with. Help me to understand how we justify taxing citizens around the country for services they wont have access to.
 
TitusAndronicus said:
Just so you know, New York to LA would never be considered. HSR is being considered over corridors between major cities where it can compete with flying (< 4 hours by rail). Actual considered routes:

San Francisco/Sacramento - Los Angeles - San Diego

Portland - Seattle - Vancouver

Chicago Hub: lines to St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland/Detroit, Minneapolis

Boston - New York - Philadelphia - Washington

Tampa - Orlando - Miami

Texas "T-bone": T-shaped line connecting Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston

Transcontinental routes are being considered by no one. Even Chicago - New York is too far for HSR to be feasible.
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Which makes this even more nonsensical to me. Again...if individual cities and states want to fund it thats fine. This is just a simple minded federal 'solution' to throw at the growing unemployment problem.
 
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phattonez said:
And some good links about private development of technology, notably developments leading up to the internet and x-rays.

Xerox and the internet
Milestones - PARC, a Xerox company

Goddard and the rocket
Goddard Rocket - Milestones of Flight

Teflon
espacenet — Bibliographic data

Aerogel
Aerogel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

X-Rays
Squire's fundamentals of radiology - Google Books

Solvay Conference and many physics developments
Solvay Conference - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The internet was conceived by scientists wishing to share data faster. And all these things are specific areas of research, they are not base scientific research. As it stands, the specialized research can be done in companies once the base research necessary to develop the technology has been achieved. That's how a lot of the technical companies come to be in fact. There are many scientists, grad students, post docs, etc. who work on something in academia, develop some good techniques for AR coatings or laser doubling. When they leave, they start up small start up companies which focus on these specific forms of research. They are able to take the that base research already done and refine it into something which becomes a consumer product. New Focus, Sigma, Spectra Physics, etc. all started out in that manner.

Yes, specialized research can be done by private companies once the base research and discoveries have been made in academia, funded by the government. This is one way in which government and the private sector interact.
 
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