$591,000 Per Second
Your tax dollars at work
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP/WBTV) – North Carolina transportation officials say they’ve reached an agreement that will allow them to obtain $461 million in federal grants to improve train service.
The agreement will allow faster and more frequent passenger service between Charlotte and Raleigh. State transportation secretary Gene Conti says the agency will seek bids for contracts for tracks, bridges and trains.
Officials say the new service would cut travel time from Charlotte to Raleigh to less than three hours, even with seven stops along the way. However, the ride will only be 13 minutes faster.
This is beyond insane.
Makes Ya Barf, Nanny State, Politics | Mr. Bingley | 
March 23, 2011 3:30 pm
Subscribe
Money, meet toilet.
But but but but….it’s a trraaaaaiiiiiinnnnn! Don’t you like trains?
/leftie whining
It’s only 168 miles between Charlotte and Raleigh. It shouldn’t take more than three hours by car.
I believe the magic word is infrastructure, Jeff. No debt is too large, no expense too insane, no improvement too trivial if is done in the name of infrastructure.
The Japanese tried to reverse their fortunes through infrastructure when their economy went belly up in the Eighties.
They didn’t call the Nineties “The Lost Decade” for nothing.
This will improve the infrastructure for BOTH freight and passenger service. The Swiss have a formula that covers the value of each minute saved and if there is enough service, that number is high. They have done this so they can prioritize improvements. These expenditures have public support and if they didn’t they would be stopped in a referendum. In this case there is capacity being added to run more trains which may not require much more equipment and in the case of the fourth train mentioned probably no extra equipment.
Ooh, a Swiss formula! Well, I of course withdraw all my criticism!
The freight argument is, frankly, ludicrous. For a three hour
tourhaul it is far more efficient to truck the goods directly from points A to B than to go through the process of trucking to the rail yard, load the containers onto the rail cars then having to repeat the process at the other end and thence truck them on, so, sorry, but I don’t buy it. You need to show that there is a very high demand for this service for the value of each of these 13 minuscule minutes that *might* be saved warrants any sort of consideration.461 million dollars. Puh-lease.
Clark, what is the relevance of this “Swiss formula”? And just how does that relate to “Spend $461 million = 13 minutes faster”?
Your post is so full of non sequiturs that it makes no sense. I suppose that there are other improvements from the project, but given the recent trend of infrastructure “improvements” (read “spend money we don’t have to create temporary jobs”), I’d be really surprised.
So, how about a link or two before you bestow more babble on us, hmmmmm?
“These expenditures have public support and if they didn’t they would be stopped in a referendum.”
You’re new to this planet, aren’t you?
Especially the massive amount of freight that moves the 168 miles twixt two contiguous cities in the same state.
Shakes the very economic foundation of the nation to keep that rail line flowing.
Not.