2StgTurbine

There is a separate thread that topic already on APC that has been going on for nearly a decade. The only thing that the thread has taught us is this community is not convinced that climate change is a problem.

No one on this forum cares about health care outside of ALPA contracts.

First you have to define what the middles class is. This forum consists of people making between $15,000 and $800,000 a year. Your view on life and economics are very different depending on where in that spectrum you fall.

And that is where this thread should have stuck to... her actual policy with regards to air travel. This could have been hashed out on page one (as most other threads concerning high speed rail).

The US is too large and its population is too spread out for high speed rail to work. It would cost way more than Europe, the travel time would be longer, and it would require the largest use of eminent domain in human history to keep the lines straight enough to actually travel at high speed.

If engineering and economic barriers don't interest you, than this topic can also be shut down with political science. AOC is a junior representative of a liberal major city for the Democratic party. She is trying to gain power in the Democratic party by getting media attention so she can control the conversation in the party. That is all she is doing. Even with a (normal) Democrat as president, this proposal would never pass.

Onfinal

This is why I don't think you and others read the resolution, nowhere in it was there a reference to eliminating air travel in favor high speed rail. Please direct me to it if I'm wrong.

Some iteration of this will happen whether you like it or not, so let's not be an industry of 21st century luddites.

Slaphappy

Doubtful, this is ludicrous and pipe dream. Even pelosi is brushing this off. As said before these are solutions to problems that don’t exist.

No they don’t, these are perpetual zombie arguments that come back to life no matter how many times they are debunked or shown to misrepresented.

aiir

You are right, it doesn't specifically state so in the official resolution that she put out listed in the article which was posted at the top of this thread. It appears that the idea of drastically curtailing air travel was promulgated due to a "Green New Deal FAQ" that AOC put on her website but then for some reason quickly deleted.



https://slate.com/business/2019/02/g...confusion.html


I used "Slate" on purpose since they are considered a left-leaning source and I figured this would eliminate any right-leaning bias. I believe the quote I pulled out above is from paragraph five.


Here's the FAQ that was deleted from her page according to Slate and NPR: https://apps.npr.org/documents/docum...n-New-Deal-FAQ



The quote above was taken from page five of her "Green New Deal FAQ".


Here is where the "Green New Deal FAQ" was before it disappeared: https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/medi...n-new-deal-faq


I don't think this is a realistic proposition that should be taken seriously but since it seems that these threads stay open for posterity, I figured it was worth it to investigate where the reference to eliminate air travel in favor of high-speed rail came from since I was also curious.

Name User

I don't know the numbers exactly but I'll take your word for it that the "vast majority" of presidential numbers have OK'd this deal...but even if that was true, it's not really relevant. Trump wanted a wall, is one being built?

labbats

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/16/obama.rail/

Democrats tried this ten years ago.

ChecklistMonkey

You'll never completely eliminate air travel. Look at Europe today.

On the other hand, what's wrong with creating a robust high speed rail system on the US from KC to NYC through major metro areas of IND/ORD/CLE/PIT/the NE corridor, FL corridor, NE corridor? Would an efficient, affordable high speed rail eliminate some aviation jobs? Absolutely. But what's wrong with making the lives of people better? High speed rail revolutionized the Japanese economy. They have already successfully test a maglev system that will travel at nearly 350mph. We are the biggest economy in the world and the best we can do is the Acela between a few cities in the NE?

FlyyGuyy

Japan is about the size of California including it's many islands. Pretty tough to say we can build complex high speed railroad lines all across the country like they have when it would have to cover at a minimum 25 times the area.

FNGFO

Have you looked at the price of the high speed rail in CA? Or the one about to be approved in TX? Let me help you out. You’re talking about spending in the hundreds of billions at a minimum to fully flesh out a high speed rail network. Probably more. And once you’re dropping the T word you’re starting to talk real money.

i fly planes

Aside from disagreeing with such a proposal -- How can you honestly say these problems "don't exist"? Again, even if you disagree with it, you really think your grandchildren will think these issues don't exist?