UK rapidly expands high speed rail network

[HitRed]

Pack Rat said Canada during the Great Depression had, “no policing of Banks” and “had strong regulations on Banks.”

Spoiler

The USA strongly regulated. Over regulated to the point it put banks at risk.

Spoiler

Canada was more liaises-faire. It was one of the least regulated banking systems in the history of the world.

[2dimes]

How about you clowns discuss trains. Is that possible? Back on track. See what I did there?

The race between California and HS2 is still chugging along. Slow and steady.

https://www.hs2.org.uk/

https://hsr.ca.gov/

Brightline Florida while not operating quite fast enough to be considered high speed rail, has actually been running pretty fast trains.

Amtrak’s Acela is rocking even faster trains.

HS1 from London to the chunnel doesn’t quite go 200 miles per hour but it’s pretty speedy.

There’s talk about building one in Canada. Sounds nice but I doubt it’ll happen in time for me to see it.

[Apatheist]

HS2 will be cancelled before it's anywhere near complete. Burnham needs the money for new Tesla cars to give to illegal asylum seekers.

[Dukasaur]

HS2 will be cancelled before it's anywhere near complete. Burnham needs the money for new Tesla cars to give to illegal asylum seekers.

Wow, aren't we suddenly sliding to the Right!

[jusplay4fun]

More money "well-spent" by California:

California high-speed rail project faces delays, rising costs, and criticism

California’s high-speed rail project, once envisioned as a groundbreaking transportation system connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles by 2020, has been plagued by delays, soaring costs, and widespread criticism, with completion now projected for 2039.

David Tangipa, a Republican state assembly member representing the Fresno area, shared his frustration with the project, which began when he was a child.

“Whenever anybody asks me what my position on high-speed rail is, I tell them I did not vote for high-speed rail because I was 12 years old when this project started,” Tangipa said.

Now 30, he and other lawmakers, including Sen. Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, believe the project has derailed.

(...) far exceeding the original $33.5 billion estimate for the entire project. The authority now projects the cost to connect the Bay Area to Los Angeles could reach $230 billion, with completion pushed to 2039.

https://www.kcra.com/article/california ... s/73495894

Well Done, CA.

[Apatheist]

HS2 will be cancelled before it's anywhere near complete. Burnham needs the money for new Tesla cars to give to illegal asylum seekers.

Wow, aren't we suddenly sliding to the Right!

It's the government that hurtling towards the Left

[ConfederateSS]

More money "well-spent" by California:

California high-speed rail project faces delays, rising costs, and criticism

California’s high-speed rail project, once envisioned as a groundbreaking transportation system connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles by 2020, has been plagued by delays, soaring costs, and widespread criticism, with completion now projected for 2039.

David Tangipa, a Republican state assembly member representing the Fresno area, shared his frustration with the project, which began when he was a child.

“Whenever anybody asks me what my position on high-speed rail is, I tell them I did not vote for high-speed rail because I was 12 years old when this project started,” Tangipa said.

Now 30, he and other lawmakers, including Sen. Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, believe the project has derailed.

(...) far exceeding the original $33.5 billion estimate for the entire project. The authority now projects the cost to connect the Bay Area to Los Angeles could reach $230 billion, with completion pushed to 2039.

https://www.kcra.com/article/california ... s/73495894

Well Done, CA.

------------------------HOLY CRAP...Tangipa was 12 ,18 years later..... ....NOW CALI cries it will take till 2039 A.D.,another 13 years...from SF to LA....IT ONLY TOOK 6 years for The GOLDEN SPIKE to Connect OMAHA ,NEBRASKA to SACRAMENTO ,CALIFORNIA...1863 A.D. to 1869 A.D..(Only took a little longer, a WAR was going on in THE EAST,for 4 years,Out WEST, Indians attacking the workers...)......TODAY'S TECHNOLOGY ...Like in my other post in DATA CENTERS....AMERICANS ARE FAT and LAZY.......... ConfederateSS.out!(The Blue and Silver Rebellion)...
-------------------Where are all The Irish and Chinese of The OLD WEST???..........YOU THINK WITH ALL THE ILLEGAL ALIENS BIDEN LET IN THE USA(20 MILLION)...It would only take CALI a week to finish the project...

[Apatheist]

Where are all The Irish and Chinese of The OLD WEST???

I'm guessing...dead?

[ConfederateSS]

Where are all The Irish and Chinese of The OLD WEST???

I'm guessing...dead?

---------You missed the mark APATH....but that was funny
-----------------NO YOU SEE WHEN THE IRISH or THE CHINESE CAME TO AMERICA.......THEY WORKED,WORKED THEIR A$$ES OFF...TO LIVE IN THE GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH...NOT RULED BY KINGS or EMPERORS ..........NOT GET FREE PLANE RIDES ACROSS THE COUNTRY, FREE HOTELS....1000's(CASH) of TAX PAYERS' MONEY......TO DO NOTHING....AS THE BIDEN ILLEGALS WERE GIVEN....Most got $15,000 total each... .......Where in THE OLD WEST, they started with zero....EARNED THEIR WAY THEMSELVES...Many Chinese would send money back home to pay WARLORDS...To Free their families,so they could save FACE/HONOR,so they could join them in AMERICA.....THE same way....ILLEGALS today send money to SOUTH AMERICA to DRUG LORDS...TO BE TOTALLY FREE...... ConfederateSS.out!(The Blue and Silver Rebellion)...

[Dukasaur]

HS2 will be cancelled before it's anywhere near complete. Burnham needs the money for new Tesla cars to give to illegal asylum seekers.

Wow, aren't we suddenly sliding to the Right!

It's the government that hurtling towards the Left

Regardless of where the government is going, spreading these kinds of Chicken Little stories about refugees is the hallmark of the Right.

[Apatheist]

HS2 will be cancelled before it's anywhere near complete. Burnham needs the money for new Tesla cars to give to illegal asylum seekers.

Wow, aren't we suddenly sliding to the Right!

It's the government that hurtling towards the Left

Regardless of where the government is going, spreading these kinds of Chicken Little stories about refugees is the hallmark of the Right.

True. I was actually being satirical - they are, in fact, giving them free SIM cards, and housing them better than they are doing the British homeless. This is what's led to the rise of the Reform party; Britain is instinctively a centre-right country, and while we'll put up with a lot, there's only so much that's acceptable. If these were legal or justifiable asylum seekers - from North Korea for example - then it's fair enough, they would be welcome, but the fact that they're coming in illegally and unnecessarily (having passed through several perfectly safe countries on the way), and getting preferential treatment over the natives, is driving the backlash.

[HitRed]

I own a railroad stock. So far so good.

[2dimes]

Close enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGF8W3Jmn9w



I had not watched this whole video before posting. I think 2026 has been extremely productive. Watch the progress shown in that video. It seems pretty significant and they might not have been abusing the workers to get it done.

[mookiemcgee]

You've all been added to my 'Autist Watchlist' for posting in this thread.

[Dukasaur]

HS2 will be cancelled before it's anywhere near complete. Burnham needs the money for new Tesla cars to give to illegal asylum seekers.

Wow, aren't we suddenly sliding to the Right!

It's the government that hurtling towards the Left

Regardless of where the government is going, spreading these kinds of Chicken Little stories about refugees is the hallmark of the Right.

True. I was actually being satirical - they are, in fact, giving them free SIM cards, and housing them better than they are doing the British homeless. This is what's led to the rise of the Reform party; Britain is instinctively a centre-right country, and while we'll put up with a lot, there's only so much that's acceptable. If these were legal or justifiable asylum seekers - from North Korea for example - then it's fair enough, they would be welcome, but the fact that they're coming in illegally and unnecessarily (having passed through several perfectly safe countries on the way), and getting preferential treatment over the natives, is driving the backlash.

Well, I'm glad you're being honest. I'll be honest too: being a refugee myself, I tend to come out swinging when I hear people attack refugees. It is an area where I'm admittedly not 100% objective, but I try to be as objective as reasonably possible.

And also, I will admit that the last time I was in Britain was in 1978, and my knowledge of current conditions there is probably not top-notch. Still, from what I read and the statistics I can look up, your basic issues are probably not that different from every other G7 country. We're all aging post-industrial states with systems systems designed in the 1960s, and a native-born worker population in decline.

Here in Canada, we now have 3 workers for every retired person. When the nation's basic social systems were engineered, in the 1960's, there were 7.5 workers per retiree. The problem is getting worse, not better. By 2035 we expect to have only 2 people working for every retired person. There's no way to fix this problem domestically: we all know that parenthood is just self-inflicted slavery and more and more people are choosing not to do it, or at least not to overdo it. Governments know this; they know immigration is the only way they will solve this problem. They may come up with humanitarian speeches about our duty to the world, but the simple fact is they're not bringing in refugees out of the kindness of their hearts. They're trying to keep the economy from crashing. I'm too old to go digging holes in the ground, and some fucker has got to go grow me some corn!

Now the robot economy of the future will soon make human labour irrelevant, but politicians don't think about 20 years from now. Their immediate concern is the 2-week news cycle, and the farthest they look into the "distant future" is the next general election.

Immigration is never popular. The new arrivals look funny, they smell funny, they speak in languages we don't recognize and we're always a little suspicious that when they talk amongst themselves they're secretly plotting to rob us. Even the most tolerant person (like me) gets pissed off when the newbies can't speak English well enough to understand a simple question about the menu! Still, we won't live without them. Regardless of what technical laws they may have broken while entering the country, they're here because we need them. If we didn't need them, trust me, we would stop the flow. Bomb the boats, feed the fish, as the Forgotten Rebels used to sing!

I'm glad your government is giving them SIM cards. It's impossible to get a job in today's world. (And I mean that quite literally. I'm a supervisor myself, and if I want to hire you, I absolutely CAN NOT until you go online and jump through the hoops that some HR retard has designed for you.) Do you want these people robbing commuters on the subway, or do you want them to get a job? So, SIM cards good.

Do they get better housing than your homegrown homeless? I don't live where you do, and I honestly can't say, but my tendency is to be suspicious of your claims there. I see the same claims being repeated in Canada, and here I can say for a fact that they are nonsense. 90% of our homeless are people who are collecting a disability cheque from somewhere -- either from CPP, or from ODSP, or from Veterans' Affairs, or from some kind of private long-term health assurance company. Disability won't let you live in grand style, to be sure, but it will let you live, if you are careful and prudent. Ultimately -- and I'm afraid to sound like too much of a prick, but there's no easy way to say it -- they are homeless because they made some really bad choices along the way, spent their disability cheque on some kind of toxin instead of paying it to the landlord. The allowances we give to the refugees are less generous than what we give to the localborn, but the refugees, having come through hardship to get here, are a little more careful and prudent about what they will do with it. Or maybe they are living in a nice apartment, but there are six of them sharing it to save costs.

I'm not underestimating how hard it is to be homeless. I was homeless in my youth, because quite honestly sleeping under a bridge or beside the trash compacter behind MacDonalds was less painful that living with my asshole parents. So I get that it's not a joke. I'm just very, very skeptical about claims that what the refugees get is more generous than what our localbord homeless get. I've seen the cheques of homeless dudes who rode in my cab on the way down to the bootleggers, and I've seen the cheques of refugees, and I know of what I speak.

[Dukasaur]

Addendum to the above: we live in the age of AI, so I decided to let Gemini connect some dots for me. Here's a comparison of the demographic issues in Canada versus Britain.

(forgive the formatting issues. Did my best to fix them)
Feature:....................................Canada...................................................................Great Britain (UK)
Current Worker-to-Retiree Ratio:......~3.0 to 3.4 workers per senior........................................~3.2 to 3.5 workers per pensioner
Historical Ratio(1960s/1970s):.........~7.7 workers per senior (1966).......................................~4.0 workers per pensioner (1970)
Future Projection (Mid-2030s to 2050).Falling to 2 to 1.........................................................Falling to 2 to 1 by 2050
Primary Buffer Strategy:..................High immigration targets to expand the youth workforce......Gradual increases to the State Pension age to keep people working longer.


So it looks from the above like your issues are similar to ours, but they are not getting worse as suddenly as ours. There was more pain in the past (already down to 4-to-1 by 1970) so there is slightly less of the pain at the moment.

[Apatheist]

Britain encouraged immigration for workers from the West Indies in the 1950s due to post-war labour shortages - called the Windrush Generation, after one of the boats used to ferry them across. They were not treated as well as they might have been.
There was another wave of Asian heritage people from East Africa in the 1970s when Uganda under Idi Amin expelled them.
The problem with these immigrants is that they are illegal, and draining the public resources without having contributed to them. Around 44000 in the year to March 2026 - that's the size of 3/4 of the towns in the country (ie only 25% have a higher population).
As well as financial, there is a massive cultural difference, to the point where the government has had to issue this guide: https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... accessible
which includes information on how to treat women (and yes, I know the indigenous population is far from perfect). This should not be necessary, but the fact that it is, for the 75% of illegals who are males of a sexually active age, is what worries most people.
The previous waves of immigrants were from British colonies and had a better grounding in British behaviour norms. People from other African countries and the Middle East are still living in patriarchal societies where women are very much second class citizens, as I'm sure you know.
We have similar demographic bias issues for the future, but you won't find too many who think this is the way to solve them.

[2dimes]

That last post has a suspicious link. Not even remotely about trains. If the mods don’t do something about it, I’m throwing the next meal Mookie makes me on the floor.

Highlighting how slow the CHSR project moves, they’re going to start laying track for phase one but are not planning to open in until 2032.


Six more years and that’s only if it stays on schedule.

[mookiemcgee]

I SPENT 10 HOURS ON THAT CROQUEMBOUCHE IT BETTER NOT TOUCH THE FUCKING FLOOR

[Apatheist]

Apologies. Let's get this thread back on track
No-one needs to save a relatively short amount of time on a relatively short journey, and for the cost involved, it simply isn't worth it. So you get to spend an extra hour in Birmingham - whoopee. I live on the HS1 line, and other than an alternative when it snows because it uses overhead cables, there's really no benefit on the journey into London, certainly not worth the extra cost - which was not only borne by those using the service, but all users of SouthEastern Trains. I didn't use it more than a handful of times in the 15 years it was available while I was commuting, but my ticket price still went up.
With the increasing debt in the UK, it's a luxury that we can't afford. Get up an hour earlier.
What would bring the cost of travel down is the replacement of vastly overpaid drivers by driverless trains. Maybe we'll lose a few idiots who think it's a good idea to play on the tracks or ignore the warnings at a level crossing, but we're better off without them anyway.

[2dimes]

Fair enough and as I attempted to say several times in this thread to big thick ralf. You can save your half penny, stay home and leave travel to the elite wealthy people that can afford it.

If your employer wants you to go somewhere miles away from your house, they can pay for your coach ticket.

If you need to go “back home” to visit your mom, save up until you are able to afford the coach fares yourself.

I SPENT 10 HOURS ON THAT CROQUEMBOUCHE IT BETTER NOT TOUCH THE FUCKING FLOOR

While I did enjoy it, a pain au chocolate would have been even better, you know I’m happiest when I get a nice ambearrger. Which is even better enjoyed when riding a train.

[Dukasaur]

Apologies. Let's get this thread back on track
No-one needs to save a relatively short amount of time on a relatively short journey, and for the cost involved, it simply isn't worth it. So you get to spend an extra hour in Birmingham - whoopee. I live on the HS1 line, and other than an alternative when it snows because it uses overhead cables, there's really no benefit on the journey into London, certainly not worth the extra cost - which was not only borne by those using the service, but all users of SouthEastern Trains. I didn't use it more than a handful of times in the 15 years it was available while I was commuting, but my ticket price still went up.
With the increasing debt in the UK, it's a luxury that we can't afford. Get up an hour earlier.
What would bring the cost of travel down is the replacement of vastly overpaid drivers by driverless trains. Maybe we'll lose a few idiots who think it's a good idea to play on the tracks or ignore the warnings at a level crossing, but we're better off without them anyway.

If it really is an hour extra, and that is a daily commute to work, then that is two hours a day, 10 hours a week, 500 hours a year. That's a lot.

Britain is pretty small, so I suppose the overall demand for high-speed trains is moderate, but even a few situations like that would be enough to make it worthwhile. If even 2,000 people save 500 hours a year, that a million hours.

[HitRed]

In the USA, in my experience, the passenger trains (AMTRAK) give the right of way to the railroads that own the track. Freight trains go first. So, you could be waiting a lot.

Spoiler

Does amtrak own any railroad tracks?

Amtrak owns a small portion of railroad tracks, primarily in the Northeast Corridor, where it manages about 730 miles of track. However, the majority of its trains operate on tracks owned by private freight companies, which complicates its operations and scheduling.

[Dukasaur]

In the USA, in my experience, the passenger trains (AMTRAK) give the right of way to the railroads that own the track. Freight trains go first. So, you could be waiting a lot.

Spoiler

Does amtrak own any railroad tracks?

Amtrak owns a small portion of railroad tracks, primarily in the Northeast Corridor, where it manages about 730 miles of track. However, the majority of its trains operate on tracks owned by private freight companies, which complicates its operations and scheduling.

Yeah. The U.S. is still an automobile society.

It would have a lot to gain from real high-speed trains.

[HitRed]

I don’t get on a train for speed. Put me in the dining car or next to a big window and I’ll stay there all day. I don’t see high speed as necessary at all if you mean the equivalent of the Concord compared to airliners.

Interestingly enough, we have a bus company that the first ticket is $1, the second is $2. It keeps going up till the bus is full or no one will willing to pay. Great, cheep movement of people.