[rpiguy99]

> I have to ask -- who are you working for? Your arguments are all paper-thin, easily torn to pieces. Roads and cars are democratic? More democratic than a seat in mass transit?

This is not at all constructive. And I believe the author probably meant "individualistic" rather than "democratic."

There are no sound reasons for investing in passenger rail in the US now. The current system is already meeting demand, and on a national level all lines except the North East Corridor requires heavy subsidy.

If there were a pent up demand for it, it would have happened. We could artificially create demand by jacking up the price of petrol, but then we are taking choice away from the consumer.

Building better, faster trains is hardly a guarantee that they will be used. My experience (which I admit is purely subjective) is that people who want nicer trains already use them. I live in a major transit corridor to NYC, and the folks who already ride the train would love it to be faster and nicer, but would they pay the higher prices? Why are they all taking slow NJ Transit instead of high speed Amtrak?

[dragonwriter]

> We could artificially create demand by jacking up the price of petrol, but then we are taking choice away from the consumer.

Jacking up the price of petrol doesn't take away choice. It may be internalizing the massive externalities associated with the use of petroleum based fuels and making the choice better reflect net utilities (including disutilities experienced by people outside of individual purchase decisions as a result of those decisions), or it may be artificially creating a new externality so that the decisions less-accurately reflect real net utilities, but in either case its not removing choice.

[lutusp]

> There are no sound reasons for investing in passenger rail in the US now.

There are no viable political reasons to invest in high-speed rail. Americans love their cars, the interstate highway system is in place, that's a lot of inertia to overcome with economic arguments.

In Europe and Japan, on the other hand, high-speed rail is booming. One of the reasons is that the prior infrastructure was substantially destroyed in WWII, allowing more options than we Americans have. Also, it's possible that Europeans aren't quite as crazy about cars as we are.

> Building better, faster trains is hardly a guarantee that they will be used.

That's certainly true, and it's probably a big argument against high-speed rail, especially when you read the recent history of Amtrak, which has always struggled to find riders. On the other hand, Amtrak has always been a "Me too" mode of transport, a niche, a novelty for the curious.

If we were deciding this without an interstate highway system and a huge, well-established car culture, I think it would be a different debate.

[melling]

I realize this is a stupid question but I'm going to answer it anyway.

"Why are they all taking slow NJ Transit instead of high speed Amtrak?"

1. There are few stops in NJ. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Amtrak_stations_in_New...

2. It doesn't go much faster than the regular train.