Another cornerstone of our politically driven assault by our Department of Transportation on the airline industry seems to be falling apart as a result of the inevitable reality of economics:
Originally Posted by Translogic
With Republicans in control of Congress and the Federal pursestrings, they've got to make good on their campaign promise to bring spending back in line. Near the top of their cut list is the proposed national high-speed rail program, and during tonight's State of the Union, President Obama will attempt to assuage fears that the GOP axe will slice deep into the country's infrastructure.
The Republican Study Committee has outlined $2.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years, and rail projects – ranging from Amtrak subsidies to high-speed rail grants – are on the chopping block. How these proposed cuts are going to affect California's planned high-speed rail system, set to connect Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento, remains to be seen, but with only $4 billion in federal funding secured and another $38 billion to go (at least), the chances of the program receiving any more cash in the next two years is unlikely.
So the 8 Billion in high speed rail study projects under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act appears to have been wasted.
$1.1 Billion spent on the "High Speed Rail" line between Chicago and St. Louis managed to speed the train up to .... wait for it ...
62 Miles Per Hour (would eleven exclamation points be too many?)
Mean while, development of next gen RNAV / RNP navigation needed to free up traffic in the NYC area and common sense solutions like Crew Pass are stuck over funding issues.
It is a no brainer that Congress is never going to fund a France style high speed rail system that (1) is just as fast as the cargo train already on the track and which (2) would require enormous subsidies to operate while it still failed to attract anyone who values their time.
Travel by airplane is far from perfect. But rewarmed 1800's technology is not going to be the threat to our profession some claimed it might be only two years ago.