Rail

35 comments

You listed "Transit Enthusiasts" and "Bottoms" as if that isn't the same thing
- How dare you be 100% correct

Deja vu!

I love seeing these memes and checking how many apply to me
- I haven't quite checked off cocaine addicts yet.. but I think every other box may or may not be at least somewhat applicable.
  
  I'm 5 out of 8. I won't say which.

I would assume a cocaine addict actually wants a high-cocaine rail.
- A high-coke rail off a hand rail on high-speed rail.
  
  Hold on, I can only breathe so deeply...

High ✅
Speed ✅
Rail ✅

Oh no they're all me

If only it were true.
Source: California voting for the Hyperloop in 2008
- It's definitely true, California is just governed by right-wingers.

Haha I'm scared of sounding like I don't like high speed rail, which I do! I love trains in general, I'm interrailing right now! Buuut I felt this was a relevant place to link this fascinating article (slightly click-baity headline) about how high speed rail in Europe is actually not constructed in a very good way, because it ends up eliminating many of the positive sides with the European railway network: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/12/high-speed-trains-are-killing-the-european-railway-network/
Edit: fixed typo
- The problem isn't how they're constructed, it's how they're run, and this article is basically just complaining about SNCF without realising it. They run bad timetables and aim for high occupancy rather than transporting more people. Jon Worth has better writing on the topic IMO.
  
  That's really a great article, thanks for the link!
  Still, there's plenty of criticism in the article I linked that is not touched on, I hardly think it becomes irrelevant by reading Jon Worth's writing! Even with his proposals I'm really not sure if we would get back the cheap and still relatively fast connections that have been removed. To me there's not a clear benefit to getting rid of the old "low-speed" rail even if we fix SNCF.
- Is it really hurting the low speed networks? I would imagine there are many stations that high speed rail doesn't go to. Let goods travel long distance low speed, let people go fast.
  
  So the article is very long so let me TL;DR a little. It mentions that when high speed rail is build, existing low-speed rails are often removed. Those removes routes are a little slower but often MUCH cheaper. I would say, like the author, that more expensive trains that are a little faster doesn't rhyme well with "let people go fast". He also has examples of night trains being removed in favour of a high speed rail, which hardly is a time-save if you count sleeping at night! Great examples in the article.
  High speed rail doesn't have to hurt low-speed rail, it just has the way we've been doing it in Europe.

I'm not afraid of flying. I'm too big for the planes. Trains are much nicer for people more than two standard deviations taller than average.

birdwatchers
- Girls in Sundresses

Fuck i hate train
mission

I just want to see what happens when a bullet train hits a moose.

From my experience, environmentalists don't like large construction projects of any kind.
Edit: This comment is based on growing up with environmentalist parents who strongly dislike HS2.
- Funny, as I'm a staunch environmentalist, and I'm fine with large projects if they have a few things:
  a purpose that serves society (and not just shareholders)
  a plan for mitigating environmental impacts (e.g., and environmental impact assessment --> environmental management plans)
  A compensation and offsetting plan for impacts that can't be mitigated
  A plan for closure and reclamation
- It depends on the kind. There are groups that would prefer to see human presence reduced to a speck so nature can thrive. There are groups that somehow care for one single bog or meadow but fail to see the bigger picture. There are also those that simply want to protect everything and do support large projects provided they fulfill a lot of regulations. There are also people such as myself who have given themselves to Realpolitik: Local environmentalism is pointless if global protection fails (some drama added for effect)
  
  There are groups that somehow care for one single bog or meadow but fail to see the bigger picture
  This is mainly what I was thinking about. People care a lot more about things local to them, rather than a railway which probably won't have any nearby stations.

35 comments