On Sat, 13 Mar 2021 10:19:33 -0500, Keyser Söze
wrote:

On 3/12/21 6:05 PM, Wayne B wrote:
On Fri, 12 Mar 2021 17:38:19 -0500, wrote:

On Fri, 12 Mar 2021 10:59:01 -0500, Keyser Söze
wrote:

On 3/12/21 10:50 AM, wrote:
On Fri, 12 Mar 2021 09:41:44 -0500, Keyser Söze
wrote:


https://ibb.co/nLVG10W

With trains, you don't have to deal with airports or long rides to and
from the airport to your eventual destination. With trains, you usually
don't have to deal with long lines. With trains, you don't have to deal
with crappy seats, even the crappy seats in first class. With trains,
you don't have to contort yourself to pee standing up in the rest room.
With trains, if the engine fails, the train simply comes to a stop.

As long as you don't mind a 20 hour ride plus the trip to and from the
station. The train makes sense if you can take the Metroliner to NY
from DC but I am not taking the milk train from Florida to DC and I
would have to drive to Sanford to get it (4 hours or more each way).
Where do you catch the train south? Union Station? Somewhere in
Virginia?
RSW is 15 minutes from here.
You are also one bomb threat away from full TSA screening on the
train.
There are no long lines in 1st class. They have an express line
through TSA, the ticket counter/baggage check and you board first.

I would drive before I took a train. It is faster.



The "photo" compared the time it takes to go similar distances on
China's modern passenger rail system and our ****ty, outmoded, ancient
passenger rail system.

The last time we took the train to Jax, we boarded at Union Station in
DC, but it does make a brief stop in Alexandria, Virginia. We did that
once. Parking there was free...within sight of the Masonic tower.

We usually take the train to NYC, New Haven, and even Boston. Took it to
Providence about a decade ago.

I said the train makes sense in the Acela corridor but once you get
out of that cluster ****, not so much.
There is no way a high speed rail link to Florida would ever come
close to paying for itself. I also doubt you would ever get all the
people along the way to go for it. Trains are dangerous enough at
45-50. Going 100+ in populated areas is a death trap. They are trying
a faster train (still not anything like high speed) in South Florida
and the death toll is striking. I heard a stat a little while ago that
less than 100 miles of track on the gold coast generates more deaths
than all the other track in the US.
The problem is about 100 grade crossings. Imagine what that would mean
in the 900 miles through the rest of the Atlantic states. I suppose if
cost was no object, you had the land and you could get a hundred local
governments to sign off, it could be elevated but it would end up
cheaper if they just put all the passengers in stretch limos and drove
them down, feeding them champagne and caviar the whole way.


===

I wonder what it would take to make the grade level crossings safer?
Are the fatalities mostly vehicles or pedestrians? I don't have much
sympathy for people who try to beat the gates but there is probably
some way to make it more difficult. There are a lot of lift bridges
on the east coast of Florida but you don't see a lot of people trying
to beat the gates on them.


My late father-in-law worked for the railroad and used to tell us tales
of the morons who tried to beat trains across unprotected crossings and
even drove around or between lowered crossing gates. There were lots of
such incidents, he said, and also incidents involving morons who walked
on or over the tracks. Evolution in action.

The rail crossings I recall in Europe are much better guarded than in
the United States. In some places there are crossing guards, though I
have no idea how these are scheduled.

Sure, lets hire 900,000 crossing guards, four for each grade crossing.
(24/7/365 plus covering vacations and weekends takes 4 people
minimum).
Sounds like something one of those bankrupt European governments might
do.
FRA says they actually have more fatalities along the rails away from
the crossings so that may not help much.
The reality is these rails are usually in minority neighborhoods and I
am surprised you call them morons for trying to live their lives with
a death train coming by dozens of times a day..
Racist! ;-)

Rich people don't usually live near the railroad tracks and if they do
move there by mistake, they seem to be able to stop the trains like
they did here.