Comments by "VE7NDE" (@denelson83) on "Inside America’s First High Speed Rail" video.

  1. Which is why the Airline lobby is bitterly against high-speed rail. Remember Southwest Airlines cancelling Texas's initial plans for high-speed rail?
    27
  2. But it has a massive short-term cost for the capitalist elites, who have invested literally trillions of dollars in the car being the only viable mode of ground transport in the US, and will fight to the death to protect those investments.
    12
  3.  @rohanb3402  Tell that to SNCF or Deutsche Bahn.
    9
  4. Which will not be the case for Brightline West.
    8
  5. And Big Oil. And Big Airlines.
    4
  6.  @gabbar51ngh  Which the US could have been able to do if Big Oil was not standing in the way...
    2
  7.  @brianfoss571  Then just do not make those stops on such a service. In the UK, there is a dichotomy between "fast" and "slow" services, and in France, the dichotomy is between "high speed" and "classic main" lines.
    2
  8.  @jackolantern7342  That is not physically possible. The big freight rail companies in the US intentionally run kilometres-long freight trains on their lines to discourage their use for passenger trains, albeit the main reason for the longer freight trains, of course, is more profit.
    2
  9.  @f-86zoomer37  Which is why you need a comprehensive conventional passenger rail network to supplement the high-speed lines. The US does not have such a network. The vast, vast majority of rail lines in the US is reserved exclusively for freight.
    2
  10. "Competition"... The worst cuss word in capitalism's book.
    2
  11. But watch as at the last minute, Big Oil, Big Auto and Big Airlines mount an all-out assault on the US's high-speed rail plans in a bid to shut them all down and take all their funding for themselves. And if Trump ends up back in the White House, they will have even more such ammunition. Americans may want home-grown high-speed rail, but the capitalist elites in the US very much do not. And Americans more often then not end up without anything capitalism does not want. If you want high-speed rail to succeed in the US, DO NOT VOTE FOR TRUMP. And then there is the worst backwater for high-speed rail in the developed world: Canada.
    2
  12. Capitalism ALWAYS puts profits first, even when faced with literal human extinction as a consequence of its "business as usual".
    2
  13.  @scorpion3128  If climate change does not extinguish the human species first...
    1
  14.  @cooltwittertag  But the US also has the fossil fuel lobby breathing down her neck.
    1
  15.  @JustWasted3HoursHere  The biggest of those groups are high-net-worth investors and large corporations. And "people refusing to pay an extra penny for gas"? Do not make me gag. Gas prices are always going up for a myriad of other reasons. In fact, the biggest catalyst for high-speed rail may be gas prices getting high enough to cause so many people to quit driving altogether.
    1
  16.  @KaviConner  No, but it would cut into the profits of three different industrial sectors.
    1
  17.  @arthurpasseri4590  Or let me guess, people will stupidly want to take their cars with them when using HSR.
    1
  18.  @arthurpasseri4590  Yeah. A realist.
    1
  19.  @TheGreatAtario  But planes are just as environmentally unfriendly as cars are.
    1
  20.  @me0101001000  i.e., Tofu-dreg construction.
    1
  21.  @nathanandsugar5252  But with a government in the US lobbied to hell and back, it cannot be considered either willing or competent in that field.
    1
  22.  @barryrobbins7694  Which is why the big US airlines will fight to the death to suppress high-speed passenger rail in the US, as Southwest Airlines already did in Texas. They saw a big warning sign in the form of Alitalia's failure when high-speed rail service took hold in Italy. And the closer CAHSR gets to completion, the more likely the big US airlines will bury it in legal action to get it suppressed.
    1
  23.  @QuantumNoir  They are not. It is only capitalism when wealth flows from the poor to the rich.
    1
  24.  @lecho0175  Because then, like now, Big Oil had the US by the balls.
    1
  25.  @enjoystraveling  But in the US, airlines have a captive market and do not want to give that up.
    1
  26.  @SethSinclair  You do not know just how powerful the capitalist elites are.
    1
  27.  @brianfoss571  If the train makes all those stops, then it would not be high-speed rail now, would it? And are you unfamiliar with the sword of Damocles that is climate change? And since I am not in the US, I only understand the metric system.
    1
  28.  @andrewdiamond2697  Stones were replaceable at scale. Is oil?
    1