I know everyone outside of the US is laughing at us for our trains. Its incredible how hard people in the US have gone to bat to take down a pretty modest high speed rail plan in California. All of the news around it is about how expensive it is and how its over budget blah blah. No mention of how almost all infrastructure projects go over budget or what the alternative is to moving people around. US should have HSR in the east, mid west, south and west. Holy Fuck we're so backwards.
I feel the resistance to high speed cross country public trains, is because theyre scared it would allow easy travel for lower class people in richer areas.
Cooper Nguyen
1. Total collapse 2. Sacrifice The Filth 3. Restructuring and Rebuilding 4. Kneel 5. Structure is given and Light-Rails will spring up like mad.
If not, then I'd rather see this land nuked and ripped into pieces.
Landon Cook
Joke: becoming a socialist because you feel strongly about racism and sexism Broke: becoming a socialist because you feel strongly about education and healthcare Woke: becoming a socialist because you feel strongly about worker's rights Bespoke: becoming a socialist because you feel strongly about housing and transit
Colton Fisher
Only a strong ruling class can take care of such a thing for you. However, it seems as though you don't care about America and don't have what it takes to reform all of this garbage. You are the filth to be sacrificed, no? Bled out from the neck or decapitation?
Isaac Ross
Our transit is absolutely dismal. And here it's even getting worse - in the past year there've been multiple instances where I'd be waiting for the bus and it simply wouldn't come and nobody at the company our city hires to handle this could answer why. People can't even rely on it for work anymore. They cut the bus that runs on my street after over 20 years of running it. They don't know what they're doing.
James Hill
Housing and transit are some of the biggest, most important means by which to control the working class.
If the proletariat and the bourgeoisie are worthless, then why not kill them all and be done with it? You want to be a leftist, then you need to taste the bitter pain of being exterminated once your usefulness has dried up. Death is possibly your best option this point…otherwise you might find annihilation at your doorstep.(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
Justin Garcia
???
Robert Fisher
This is a good point - Before the advent of feudalism and landlordry, pretty much everyone had housing because there was no middleman extract rent from owning land which others lived on. Rentseeking suppresses workers' power as well as productive economic activity by making necessities ridiculously expensive and thereby controlling access to resources and control of the workers over how those resources are used.
Jason Myers
Ignore the schizo.
Honestly I feel that because capitalism is so far developed in a real physical sense (as in occupation of land) that it is more and more becoming rent based. That's why we live in such stagnant times. To stay true to socialism and materialism would mean re-orienting our analysis to have more focus on this. Late capitalism is characterized by rent and stagnation.
Hell yeah, I'm pleasantly surprised how that group hasn't become too liberal even as it grew in size. You can even find some good defenses of 20th century socialism even if "muh stalinism" democratic "socialists" outnumber them.
American cities are generally so sprawling that to move around with any efficiency you have to use a car in one way or another. Cities with successful rail systems are dense and designed with efficient foot travel in mind. Places like Japan, Korea and China are successful at high speed rail because pretty much all of their metro zones have very developed rail/subway systems and last mile transportation. Whereas in most American cities, pedestrians are an afterthought and the entirety of transportation infrastructure is geared towards motor vehicle travel (most California sidewalks are only four feet wide, last mile transportation is completely absent). The only places where you might be able to get your business done without a car is if you live smack dab in the heart of a metropolitan zone. Anywhere else and the nearest store or bus stop to your house is a mile away.
What would be by far the most used rail routes in that plan would be the Inland Empire -> Los Angeles and Inland Empire -> San Diego routes. Which would go something like this.
You'd have to rent out a parking spot for your car at the train station. And you'd have to call up a cab every time you wanted to go anywhere in the destination city. This would be way too expensive.
This at first seems reasonable but due to the complete lack of last mile transportation this method would probably have you spending over an hour per day just walking to and from bus stops. The new surge of rental scooters is one method of trying to solve this last mile problem albeit rather unsuccessfully.
This is in comparison to the current method of This is much simpler and less of a hassle than the previous methods and offers much more flexibility, is cheaper than the rent-a-cab option and faster than the bus option.
Now the advent of self driving cars might very well change all of this. If there is a constantly running shuttle fleet of self driving cars that will cheaply take you straight from your location to the train station, and from the train station to your destination then we might just see enough political push to revamp the rail system. But until self driving tech has made traveling the last mile simple and cheap enough, people will continue choose the convenience of driving cars over rail.
Blake Williams
This. Proudhon was right.
Nathaniel Myers
user you might not like hearing this but american cities will be completely rebuilt to be transit, pedestrian and bike friendly just like they've been rebuilt to be car friendly halfway the 20th century. The tram networks of the 1930s which have been torn down will be small play compared to the future that socialism holds.
Don't get the wrong idea. I think high speed rail systems have amazing potential and I don't have anything against public transportation. I just think that, due to the realities of the sprawling layout of American cities, even with a rebuilding you would first need something that is both extremely flexible and efficient for intracity transportation. Completely revamping the transportation grid and somehow sandwiching in a Japan style rail system would require a massive amount of resources, far more than any other previously implemented system. If something like self driving buses could nearly reach efficiencies of trains then I think it would be much more viable and less resource intensive to do something like narrowing the roads and mainly repurposing them as "tracks" for the bus/shuttle fleets (basically making them automated single car carriages that don't require metal tracks). Which would give space to widen the pedestrian avenues and add actual dedicated bike lanes. I think this would largely solve the transportation problems in cities and actually enable people to survive without owning a car. And with the solving of the intracity transportation problem, the high speed rails would be able to function as intended as the main form of intercity transportation. But the self driving tech needs to get there first. I really do look forward to the day when I don't need to slog through traffic everyday for work, and can buy a $50 ticket to take a 2-3 hour bullet train from San Diego to Lake Tahoe for a weekend trip.
Tyler Barnes
Roads are way more costly to maintain over long distances. It's one of the reasons why America is falling apart. It literally cannot afford to keep it's many roads, highways, and bridges in proper order.
Samuel Hall
It's also a lie. It's more like
It's a huge fucking hassle where at any moment you can get fucking murdered by some drunk asshole or someone on their phone. It is simultainiously the most stressful and most boring part of anyone's day. Compare that to public transport where you don't really have to do anything. You just walk in, sit down, and someone ELSE drives you.
Leo Watson
As a Californian native:
Not even dyed in the wool progressives want it.
Asher Wright
Try looking up what ford did in the early 20th century. It's about cars, planes, and oil.
Nicholas Russell
Philosophy paints grey on grey the living colours of the world and the owl of Minerva takes flight at sunset
Matthew Gomez
Trains are the the most proletarian means of mass transport. inb4 "workerism" or whatever
almost all public projects like this go over budget. Highways go over budget all of the time, but they never have a target on their back so its not reported on. Honestly feel like you're getting duped by all of those LA times articles that so desperately want this thing not to happen. The ballot initiative stated its speed - nonstop LA to SF in less than 2 hours.
fake news
Andrew Ortiz
the stakes are to high, you must organize fellow workers.
Wyatt Russell
user, i think you should take a look at amtrak prices if you think it's going to cost $50..
Julian Adams
Proper urban planning would actually significantly reduce resource drain. Do you not realize how inefficient and inhumane american cities are? There are little innate qualities of cars that make them so great, car dependency is enforced by design. Atleast 90% of car trips can be replaced.
In a way the personal car in the US has been the greatest tool for subjugating the populace in many places. It was once lauded as a symbol of personal freedom, the ability to move as oneself pleases. However, since then cities and communities have been designed around the existence and in accordance to the needs of this vehicle. The assumption that every man has or should have one to enhance his freedom has changed in spirit to the structurally enforced idea that every man has to have one to have any freedom. You see, the waning of public transport and the sprawl of highway-walled suburbs force many to having a car. If one wishes to find work, one must be able of covering ground to get there. If one wishes to visit a convenience store, a clinic, the library, anything, they must have a car. Moving on foot or by bicycle is challenging with a lack of sidewalks, massive highways, and other obstructions stretching out further what would initially seem like a simple trek. Some are spared this fate, having some semblance of public transport at their disposal or services and employment within reach of not needing a car to get there. However many of the places where one can have such luxuries are in –or close to– city centers, which are becoming ever more gentrified and expensive. To live cheap has become an expensive luxury in this case, too.
Even if the car is a running expense with its upkeep costing a good amount, since the Great Recession many chose to live in their vehicles rather than sell their car and keep their home. After all, what is the worth of having a home, if you cannot get to work? You'll just lose your house eventually as well. This is how deep the necessity, the reliance goes.
People have little hopes of escaping this poverty-trap, when they are chained to poor neighborhoods by a lack of means to travel, where income is limited, and where poor funding is the norm for local education (educational budgets being funded by property-taxes). They do not have the economic means to move to better pastures, nor do their low education and limited funds to acquire and upkeep a car allow them to work in areas with more prosperous employment opportunities. Therefore proper public transportation can be considered a decisive tool in creating social mobility and giving people control over their own lives.
Guaranteeing that all men have the means to move to any point A they desire to any point B with ease is a necessity under Socialism. And this can be best achieved with with a working and extensive public transport system. …among other things, such as redesigning neighborhoods to be more self-contained and pedestrian-friendly as if they were small towns by themselves, etc. The greater efficiency and lower stress public transport offers is also a boon to uphold. In America this may be a challenging task to undertake, as many suburbs need to be torn down and rebuilt to permit a more sensible structure that allows such services. Funnily enough one could say smashing capitalist ideology requires literally smashing cityscapes spawned from/by capitalism as well.
Dramatized but correct. I’d say nearly 60% or trips I go on in my major metropolitan area are plagued by unforeseen traffic events. Yesterday I left my apartment to go on a trip that was supposed to take 20mins, and instead it took an hour and a half because there was a wreck. This happens constantly. I’d say 5-10% of the time there is a dangerous obstruction in the middle of a freeway. Like a piece of debris, literally mattresses and wooden chairs that have fallen off of trucks. A month ago I literally saw an overloaded 18 wheeler drop a massive spool of some kind of wire about 3 cars ahead of me. It looked large enough to crush the cabin of a car, given that it was mostly bumper to bumper it was extremely fortunate nobody was next to the 18 wheeler when their cargo fell.
By contrast, the most effective transit I’ve ever experienced in my entire life was Japan. It’s obscene, I want to cry. Their trains are un-fucking-believable. Always on time, at most a 10min walk from wherever you are, and the cities themselves tend to have plenty of things to do or see anywhere because of how walkable they are. The worst part of it seems to be if you’re a girl, you’re likely going to get felt up on a crowded train at some point. But functionally their trains seem safer and an untold degree more effective than roadways in America. I want to die. Fucking kill me.
Oh, ignore me saying dramatized. It’s absolutely correct, I skimmed the post and misread murdered as though someone could kill you with a knife while going to and from your car.
Jonathan Brown
Just saying they "all go over budget" isn't a good enough reason, it went from costing an already enormous $32 Billion to $77 Billion.
In the meantime we aren't paying our teachers, we aren't fixing roads, but our government sure as hell is trying to find creative ways to tax us: proposals range from a mileage tax–quite literally charging us just for driving–to charging people a tax for text messages. All of this is meant to supposedly "fix the roads" but every tax placed on us is justified with claims that we'll "use it to fix the roads", and it always turns out to be nonsense.
Don't get me wrong, I love trains. I would be satisfied, even, with a leisurely train ride through the countryside. But I think this whole project stinks of incompetence.
