OT
Timely article I saw today on the highway trust fund going bust... Also, on a related note, some years ago I needed to get to NY from Chicago on short notice, could not get a flight that didn't cost an arm and a leg, and ended up taking the train. Via Amtrak, the trip took over TWENTY HOURS. I checked the schedule of the 20th Century Limited a HUNDRED years ago, and it made the trip back then in 16 hours. Wish we could build a network like the Chinese are doing in the article below... The roughly 800 mile trip from Beijing to Shanghai takes less than five hours. I'd never fly if I could do that...
Regards,
John
America's crumbling roads: Time for a gas tax hike?
Who's going to fix the roads?
Wednesday, 7 May 2014 | 2:53 PM ET
The federal gas tax hasn't gone up in 20 years. CNBC contributor Ed Rendell and Cato Institute senior fellow Dan Mitchell, debate whether it's time.
With money running out to fix America's crumbling roads and bridges, and a fight looming in Congress over how to fund those repairs, one former governor told CNBC that a federal gas tax hike is needed, and fast.
If the government "kicks the can down the road" by delaying funding the Highway Trust Fund, "we're going to miss next year's construction cycle, which is going to really contribute to the roads getting even worse and bridges in dangerous, dangerous condition," former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell told " Street Signs."
Based on current spending trends, the U.S. Department of Transportation said it expects the highway account of the Highway Trust Fund to run out of money before the end of the fiscal year 2014.
Read More Pothole pain: The cost of this winter's pitted roadways
America's roads and bridges are in dire need of repair: 33 percent of major roads are in "poor or mediocre" condition and 25 percent of bridges are "structurally deficient or functionally obsolete," according to the transportation research and lobbying group TRIP.
Scott Eelis | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Members of the Boston Public Works Department fill potholes on Herald Street in Boston, Mass.
"We used to be No. 1 in infrastructure according to a group called the World Economic Forum. We're now sixteenth," said Rendell, also an NBC News political analyst and CNBC contributor. "We're a pathetic case when you look at our competition."
On Capitol Hill, both sides of the aisle don't appear ready to raise the gas tax, which hasn't gone up in 20 years. It is still just above 18 cents a gallon.
On Monday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said, ""We have never proposed or a supported a gas tax." Republican House Speaker John Boehner also opposes an increase.
Read More In DC, battle lines drawn over transport funding
For Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow at CATO Institute, the solution is to phase out the federal gas tax and have the states fund transportation.
"Problems are better fixed closer to home," he told "Street Signs." "When the federal government is involved you get bridges to nowhere, you get pork, you get corruption. It just doesn't work."
However, with interstate highways carrying cars through multiple states, Rendell said that won't work.
"We have to have some sort of national transportation network," he said, and while states have raised taxes, "it's simply not enough."
Read More Crisis in America: A crumbling infrastructure
—By CNBC's Michelle Fox. Reuters contributed to this report.
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A new bullet train whisks passengers the 800 miles from Beijing to Shanghai - 800 miles in a mere 5 hours
Train attendants take their positions, as they wait for passengers to board a bullet train heading for Tianjing, at the train station in Beijing Wednesday, April 18, 2007. Faster Chinese trains running at about 200 kph (124 mph) began service Wednesday as part of a bid to keep up with ballooning transport demand, state media reported. (AP Photo/EyePress) (AP)
By Huntly Collins, For The InquirerPosted: August 20, 2012
BEIJING - With its sparkling domed skylight, polished granite floor tiles, grand piano, and string of retail outlets such as Timberland and Nautica, the Beijing South Railway Station could compete with the world's finest for modernity and cleanliness.
It was here in December that we boarded China's new high-speed bullet train that whisked us off to Shanghai, more than 800 miles to the south, in just five hours. For efficiency and comfort at a relatively low price ($185 round-trip for second-class seats that were nicer than those on Amtrak's Acela), you can't beat it. Cruising at about 185 m.p.h., the bullet train provides a smooth, quiet ride through China's eastern industrial corridor as it snakes south through four provinces before reaching its terminus at Shanghai's Hongqiao Rail Station. This is like leaving Philadelphia's 30th Street Station at 10 a.m. and arriving in Atlanta by 3 p.m.
Opened with much fanfare on June 30, 2011, the Beijing-to-Shanghai line is the world's longest high-speed railway. It was constructed in just three years at a cost of $32 billion, part of the massive government stimulus package that helped cushion China from the ravages of the global financial crisis. Not surprisingly, the rapid infusion of money into the state-run railway system brought not only economic stimulus but also corruption, mismanagement, and lax safety oversight.
Those problems coalesced on the night of July 23, 2011, when a high-speed train rear-ended another train that had lost power during a storm and stalled on an overpass outside the southern coastal city of Wenzhou. Six train cars derailed, some of them falling 50 feet off the overpass. Forty people, including two Americans, were killed and 191 were injured. Graphic images of the accident, which outraged the Chinese public, were beamed around the world.
We were well aware of the tragedy when we planned our Christmas-break trip from Beijing to Shanghai. We were in Beijing to visit with our teenage daughter, a Central High School student who was spending her junior year studying there, and she joined us on the train trip. Given the accident - and other reports of delays and shutdowns elsewhere on China's high-speed rail system - should we fly or take the new bullet train from Beijing to Shanghai? The ticket price was about equal, so we had to weigh other factors.
On the one hand, prudence argued for the airline. Although Wenzhou was more than 200 miles south of Shanghai, it was part of the same high-speed rail system and presumably made use of the same signaling equipment that an official government investigation later blamed for the Wenzhou crash.
On the other hand, the bullet train would give us a glimpse of the countryside, avoid the hassle of airports and cramped airplanes, and allow us more time to talk with our daughter, whom we had not seen in four months. Besides, we reasoned, despite all the publicity about the Wenzhou crash, traffic accidents, not train crashes, are the leading cause of death in China among those under the age of 45.
So on one of those rare blue-sky days in Beijing, when the air pollution had cleared enough so you could see the surrounding mountains, we made our way via taxi through morning traffic from Beijing's Xicheng District in the north to the Beijing South Station on the opposite edge of the capital.
A Chinese friend had purchased our tickets a few days in advance so we would be assured of a seat. But at least on this day, there was no need. Even in second class, the least expensive seating, there were many empty seats; and in the plush first-class and VIP seating, the train was virtually empty.
We sat three in a row in comfortable seats with old-fashioned white doilies on the headrests and plenty of legroom. There was free WiFi, and an electrical outlet at the bottom of each chair. In the front of our car, a digital sign, in Mandarin and English, reported our speed and progress through more than a dozen cities from Tianjin in the north to Nanjing in the south. The restrooms were immaculate, with Western-style toilets.
As the train picked up speed, it felt as if we were floating on air rather than hurtling through space. After the hustle and bustle of Beijing, where we had spent a hectic week, the train was the perfect place to sit back and relax and let the scenery roll by - fallow fields, laid out in neat squares; irrigation canals, thick with ice; seedlings pushing up on reforested hills once denuded by strip mining; and, on the outskirts of the cities, cranes crawling over the landscape in the rush to build new factories and high-rise apartments.
At most of the cities, the concrete walls along the rail line blocked a clear view of city life. The skeptic in me thought this might be a deliberate effort to shield Westerners and the Chinese business elite from getting a firsthand look at the growing economic divide between the haves and the have-nots. A less guarded view would be that it was a safety feature.
Although the train had no formal dining car, there was a snack bar. A cup of soup was just six yuan (about $1); a bag of almonds, 20 yuan ($3.20); prunes, 16 yuan ($2.56). For 30 yuan ($4.80), the three of us shared a box of delicious Chinese pastries and steaming cups of strong green tea.
We had left Beijing at 10 a.m. At 2:45 p.m., we pulled into the Shanghai station, which is located at the city's domestic airport on the outskirts of town. To get to our hotel on East Nanjing Road, we took the subway rather than a taxi, which can get tied up in traffic for hours. Though it was standing room only, the subway cost just five yuan (about 80 cents) and got us to our destination in 40 minutes.
All in all, a relaxing trip. For the more adventurous, however, I'd recommend the old-fashioned way to get from Beijing to Shanghai - the so-called hard sleeper train. It will take you 10 hours, cram you into a cabin with five other people and involve a traditional Chinese squat toilet. But it will cost half as much as the bullet train and will expose you to a fascinating parade of humanity - the real China, which the engineers who designed the bullet train seem to have left behind.
Huntly Collins is an assistant professor of communications at La Salle University and a former reporter at The Inquirer and the Portland Oregonian. She has traveled widely in China over the last 32 years as both a journalist and an educator. |
