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Today’s post comes from Politicus.us. If you don’t visit that site, I hope the next time your mother sucks off a donkey your father catches her.

Despite the fact that the United States still has the largest rail network in the world, unlike many other developed and even undeveloped countries, our passenger rail service leaves a whole lot to be desired, mainly because it is more profitable for the railroads to carry freight, rather than people.

Besides relatively small, regional commuter rail lines and some specialty tourist and sightseeing trains, government subsidized Amtrak remains the only real passenger option in the U.S.

For decades now the world has been marveling at the Japanese “Bullet Trains” and later at the French TGV, both very fast – albeit a bit expensive – but very, attractive alternatives to air travel, cars and buses.

A few years ago, Shanghai was the first to implement a German-developed magnetic levitation train on a route, between the city and its airport. With a maximum speed of 431km/h, or 267 miles per hour, it takes only eight minutes to complete the 30km trip.

One of these trains would be just the ticket for the Washington-New York-Boston route. The problem with the so-called Northeast Corridor (NEC) is the fact that it happens to be a very curvy route, not allowing very high speeds, without complete rebuilding. That of course would not only be very expensive (and we never, ever want to spend money on something useful) and would probably require the acquisition of numerous rights of way, demolition of existing structures and so forth.

Although sections of the NEC have been rebuilt and upgraded, the route still wouldn’t allow speeds even remotely approaching the Japanese, French, or German/Chinese trains.

It was therefore decided to procure tilting train sets, which could use the existing tracks, while achieving greater speeds by tilting the trains inwards on the turns. The Canadian consortium Bombardier has won the $611-million contract with its design, originally termed the “American Flyer”, which later became Amtrak’s “Acela” brand. The trains are capable of 240 km/h, or 150 mph speeds. Some upgraded sections of track actually allow such speeds on the straightaways. This of course is well below the above-mentioned Japanese and French trains and in a completely different category than the Shanghai maglev set up.

The real problem is that the Acela trains were actually built four inches (10cm) wider than they should, reducing the permissible tilt on the turns from 6.5 to 4.2 degrees, effectively reducing the speed on large sections of the Northeast Corridor. At issue is basically the fact that it has been determined that a more pronounced tilt, at a higher speed could be dangerous if two trains were traveling in opposite directions on the same turn.

That said: we still do not have a viable, fast and affordable train service on the very busy Washington-New York-Boston route. Driving takes at least nine hours. Taking a plane has become nightmarish because of the security regulations, overly large airports, which are too often very inconveniently located. The airlines are notoriously unreliable as of late. As a matter of fact, it is a rarity when a plane departs and arrives on time on any route.

The latest, humongous “stimulus” plan does provide a trickle for “investigating” high speed rail to the tune of about $8 billion. I wouldn’t be surprised that this was included thanks to Vice President Biden, who has been a regular Amtrak commuter for many years. But why the hell haven’t we investigated it years ago? How long will it take before the U.S. – a country with the world’s largest rail network will finally enable its inhabitants to travel by rail in comfort, speed and safety and in an environmentally sound way?

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Tags: Boston, Guest Post Friday, New York, Tains, Washington
Comments (5)

Thank God Congress rescued the economy…Imagine how fucked we would be if they didn’t.

Stocks fell Wednesday for the third session in a row, with the Dow industrial tumbling over 400 points, as investors bet that a long and deep recession is on the horizon.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) lost 411 points, or about 4.7%, to 8,282.66. It was the lowest close for the blue-chip average since it settled at 8,175 on Oct. 27.

Over the past three days, the Dow has fallen more than 660 points, or 7%.

“The concern is that the economy will turn out worse than the current forecast [and] the recession will be longer and more severe,” said Hugh Johnson, chief strategist at Thomas Lloyd Global Asset Management in New York.

Hey…did you hear Osama Bin Laden is planning a new terrorist attack? No. Well he is…And it’s suppose to be bigger than 9-11.

Who else is hoping Wall Street is the target?

This is how I want to see it happen:

CNN is doing a report on the Stock Market and is showing live footage of those Wall Street cocksuckers as they try to see how bad they can fuck over America while making enough money to buy their fourth mansion before lunch.

Suddenly a Greyhound bus comes CRASHING through the wall at 100 miles an hour, skidding on its side and instantly killing 30 of the motherfuckers.

Once the bus comes to a screeching stop, 70 Islamic terrorist get out of the bus with enough explosives around their waist that Dick Cheney instantly gets a hard on. After surveying the scene, each terrorist grabs the nearest stock broker, bends them over, and brutally ass rapes ‘em on national TV.

After brutally ass fucking every person in the building, the terrorist do their little victory yell and BOOM..blow themselves up…killing every one of those greedy cum catching fucks.

But that’s not the best part.

Once the smoke clears, middle-class Americans start pissing on those who crawl out of the rubble on fire.

What?

So you wouldn’t piss on a burning stock broker?

I can’t blame you. Why waste good piss?

Besides…everyone knows the fastest way to put out a flaming stock broker is by shooting their load in the stock broker’s left eye..just don’t shoot it in their right eye…they aren’t too fond of that….