Comments by "COL BEAUSABRE" (@colbeausabre8842) on "Geography By Geoff" channel.

@Poisson4147 BULLSHIT. The Trolleys and interurbans were obsolete and inconvenient and Americans voted with their feet. The lines NCL took over were already dying and the cities were glad to see them go.
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@DOSFS Amtrak carried 32 million passengers in 2019 (pre-Coovid) versus 1.1 billion airline rides. That's not even rounding error. The US people voted with their feet and anyone arguing they made the wrong decision is refighting the civil war.
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@laurie7689 Another helicopter mom cowering in fear of the EVIL outside (insert evil laugh)
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@laurie7689 Funny, I was trained about as a first grader in 1957
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@faultier1158 Who cares, we're talking about the US
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@NozomuYume Absolute BS. The people wanted it and voted in politicians who supported it. Every GI came home with two dreams 1) Finda nice girl, settle down and raise a family 2) Buy a new car. And it was the culmination of the Good Roads Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Roads_Movement. As far as lobbying goes, the biggest were the construction unions and contractors - the people who would get the money tomorrow, not sometime in the future.
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@NozomuYume That assertion is just plain ignorant. They are prime targets for terrorists. "The 2004 Madrid train bombings (also known in Spain as 11M) were a series of coordinated, nearly simultaneous bombings against the Cercanías commuter train system of Madrid, Spain, on the morning of 11 March 2004—three days before Spain's general elections. The explosions killed 193 people and injured around 2,000."
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And, guess what, American and Canadian railroads invested a fortune in reequipping those "wonderful" trains post-WW2 and lost their shirts. So much so that the last commercial order for passenger equipment was by passenger friendly Santa Fe in 1956.
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This guy is what rail fans call a "crayonista" - someone who draws pretty lines on maps ignoring practical considerations such as demand, funding, etc. Brightline and Texas are exceptions to the rule - because, as private firms, they have to take those factors into account. Second, no private RR is going to agree to "hosting" HSR - it's too disruptive to try to mix 30 mph freights and 150 passengers (the NEC is almost entirely passenger, the territory having been overbuilt in the early 20th Century, the freight traffic is now routed over some of those redundant lines). And you can forget HSR on the NEC. It can't be upgraded beyond current speeds (and, by the way, the vaunted Acela only achieves its top speed on limited trackage - Elizabeth to Trenton, for example, roughly 40 miles of straight right of way, out of 460) due to curves and grades. If you want true HSR (150 mph and up), you have to build a band new railroad through some of most built up and expensive land in the US
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