On 9/3/13 12:43 PM, wrote:
On Tue, 03 Sep 2013 11:44:42 -0400, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

On 9/3/13 11:30 AM, wrote:
On Tue, 3 Sep 2013 09:57:25 -0400, iBoaterer wrote:

No, it's mostly a stigma, people think elevated trains, they think
noise, they think unsafe, etc. Add to that that for some reason beyond
me, there are a LOT of people in the U.S. who just fear and loathe any
new technology.

Elevated trains ARE noisier and if they derail, over a major road,
they are a lot more dangerous.
We are not talking about the Lake Street El here. You want that train
going 150 MPH or more.

BTW you keep saying "innovation" and "new technology" but this is 200
year old technology and every plan I have heard involves buying
existing technology from Europe or Japan. Were is the innovation?

Bringing high speed trains over from Europe would be new technology for
this country, because we have no capability anymore for passenger rail
innovation. We'd have to reverse engineer what they are doing across the
big pond.

We are still not talking about any huge amount of innovation since the
John Bull. It is just incremental improvement.
The fact remains, we are not Europe. The US was developed around
mobility and the automobile. Perhaps if we had rebuilt from scratch
like Europe after WWII and concentrated on rail transport, we could
adopt the European model, but the fact is, we didn't. We built good
roads and comfortable cars for the masses.

Japan? We would never live like that

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XfVl6_R7_k



Right...we can't do it because we can't do it because we can't do it.
Got it.