The Railroad Cults – And Their Congressional Friends
Long-Haul Hi-Speed Rail Is A Scam – But A Politically-Correct One
Always dependable for great entertainment…
Congress, that is. Another proof that when nobody questions what somebody says, they get accustomed to saying stuff that anybody with an IQ higher than an artichoke could recognize as lunacy…
Like, a few years ago, at a hearing regarding a major troop deployment to Guam, one of our august solons is reported to have asked if all these additional people might make the island capsize. True or not – it fits.
Last week, even that was topped, with some nitwit freshman member of the House, outlining a proposal to completely change our economic system, moving toward something more in conformity to the economic miracles seen in Cuba and Venezuela.
Enter The Rail Cults. One particularly innovative part of it was to move in the direction of eliminating air travel, and enhancing the use of rail.
Great. While we’re at it, let’s abandon suburbs and move into caves – not much carbon there… only slightly more than the gray matter of these forward thinkers.
Yes, it’s that carbon footprint thing, probably. Not to mention the ability to propose almost anything in Congress with a straight face. Reality has left the building.
Also departed is good sense inside some of the media.
While it’s amazing enough that anybody would even take this seriously (a whole bunch of co-clowns in Congress immediately jumped on this square-wheeled bandwagon), what’s more amazing is that the majority of the media just quietly reported on it, without an inkling of a question, regardless of how rabidly contrary to reality the program would be, at least outside of a totalitarian country.
Rail Is Better, You Know. The Cult Says So. The romantic heydays of the 20th Century Limited will be back. Sitting on a rail car for a few days between New York and San Francisco will be much more healthy and environmentally-compatible with polar bear habitats than doing it in five hours on an airplane.
And establishing lots of new passenger rail lines – it’s going to stimulate the economy, these folks will tell us. ‘Course, the fact that there are issues with these things, like at-grade crossings, accessing populated areas, lower time-efficiency, the need for distribution systems at the stops involved, etc., are not mentioned. Nor even considered. This is Congress, see.
Then there’s getting rights-of-way for new rail lines. That’s not a problem in the minds of these folks, as in this proposed new world, only certain sectors of the population have the right to even have rights.
Some big-time farmer in the path of a new rail line planned to go through Indiana has no standing versus the will of the people, which, by the way is mostly just these legislative thugs, or a vote-mob churned into a frenzy. (Take a look, some of these forward-thinkers have openly stated that the US Constitution gets in their way. Gee, that seems to have been a problem for politicians in other countries, too… like in the 1930s.)
Rail Is Obsolete For Long-Haul Passenger Travel. The point is this: rail is a part of the communication system, and has a place – where it makes economic sense. But for passenger travel it’s an incompetent and poor modality for much more than intra-urban transit in high-population corridors.
Time For Pro-Active Transportation Planning. The Rail Cult is very real… and we can watch for more of this type of luddite thinking in the future.
The solution is for the air transport industry to more aggressively get involved in futurist transportation planning. Develop their own vision, instead of leaving a planning vacuum to be filled by the kind of jihadist non-thinkers we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks.
This means pro-actively promoting the benefits of air travel v other channels, and promulgating regional solutions – some of them multi-modal, actually.
Forcing People to Conform To The Cult, Nothing Else. The concern here is that these latest proposals from the nut sector in Congress are not intended to improve transportation, or improve anything, per se.
Instead these self-righteous thugs want force the public to alter their lives and to conform how they in Congress think people should live, based on a near-sacred set of beliefs that are not to be ever questioned. Remember the proclamation, “the science has been decided.” They will brook no discussion.
Hopefully, this insulting stupidity will get zapped by introduction of level thinking in the Marble Playpen in Washington.
But it’s based on ginning up mob politics – and history has shown where that can lead.