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'Amtrak Joe' Biden is off to Delaware to give out $16 billion for passenger rail projects (apnews.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/news@lemmy.world
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President Joe Biden — perhaps the nation’s biggest Amtrak fan — is set to promote new federal investments for trains on the heavily trafficked Northeast Corridor.

The Democratic president is headed to Bear, Delaware, on Monday to announce more than $16 billion in new funding that will go toward 25 passenger rail projects between Boston and Washington, the White House says. Bear is located about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from Biden’s home of Wilmington.

His remarks will be held at the Amtrak Bear Maintenance Shops, where trains are maintained and repaired. The investments, the White House says, will help trains run faster, cut delays and create union jobs.

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[–] 130 points 2 years ago (7 children)

Why is decent rail service, like basic medical care, a contentious issue in the U.S.? Even this article casts shade by saying 'Bear is located about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from Biden’s home of Wilmington.' As if having access to public transportation is some kind of left wing elite privelege that no one else can utilize.

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  • [+] 45 points 2 years ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Genuinely millions of people think the government doing stuff is socialism / communism.

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  • [–] 25 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    One part of the problem is that Congress has a rural bias, so there are a lot of rural Congresspersons who don't see the benefit of better rail service so they won't vote for it.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    Why is decent rail service treated as something only the north east can have? Like, I’m glad they’re getting more, but it can be frustrating how there’s a fair amount in one area and basically none west of the Appalachian mountains.

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  • [+] -17 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    America is about twice the size of all of Europe. Railroads were controlled by monopoly rich people. Once America became more industrialized, planes became a better cargo transit option. That and the interstate system made trucks an even better economical option. Railroads were not an option as they were expensive and land intensive(which also meant more money for acquiring land)

    For medical care, the US government actually spends a bunch on healthcare on par with most other countries. Just that a majority of the monet will go to a bloated medical company into a billionair's pocket before any of it applies to an individual.

    So, extreme capitalism ruined both. Yet we have politicians and people who think we should push further towards a capitalistic way of running things..

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  • [–] 27 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Railroads are land intensive but somehow 27 lane highways aren’t? Also wait until you find out how expensive it is to maintain all of those highways…

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  • [+] -13 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Railroads have always been business owned. So acquiring land is expensive for them. Highways and interstates are government owned. So they just forced owners to accept the appraised value.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    And for whatever reason you think we couldn’t do literally the exact same thing we did with highways to build nationalized rail?

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago

    California is as densely populated as Spain, which has an excellent high speed rail network, the northeastern US has densities comparable with Central Europe and the rest of the East coast is well within the ranges seen in western Europe.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    America is about twice the size

    I’m going with “size doesn’t matter” here; it’s all politics. On the one hand we have a political requirement that all these long distance routes be kept running, even if they’ll never be viable, never be funded adequately. But on the other hand most of the population is in urban/suburban areas that could be effectively served by good rail service. We don’t have the political will power to create good rail service where it’s most effective, most needed, but we do waste money on bad rail service where it will never be effective

    Railroads were not an option as they were expensive and land intensive

    I’m not buying this, since the tracks and right of way used to exist. Yes it’s really expensive to acquire now, and that’s going to happen since centers of population change but you can’t use this as an historical reason, because historically we had a lot more train service.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yeah I’d love to take a train from Ohio to California if it didn’t take longer than the greyhound for more money than a plane ticket. At our size low speed long distance passenger rail is unwanted. But I think a lot of people would be comfortable with a 1-2 hour ride from Cleveland to Chicago and another hour or two to St. Louis, and so on until they’re in California by the end of the day or so. And it should be subsidized to allow it to compete with the heavily subsidized highway and air systems.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Don’t get me wrong, I’d also love to take long distance train rides and believe it more than worthwhile to build them all up to modern high speed lines. Some services are worth more than immediate profit/loss.

    However the reality is long distance lines will never have high ridership, never be profitable, so it is disingenuous to require those lines while claiming rail never makes a profit.

    We need to make a decision and stick with it:

    — is good train service a societal good that benefits us all over the long term, in which case the long distance lines deserve better funding, along with the entire system ?

    — Or do we focus on profit/loss, in which case we need to close the long distance lines, the connectivity to to less populated towns, small cities, counties, entire states, the integration to bring our country together, in favor of greatly increased inter-city rail where it is most needed, most effective and can be profitable by serving half the population in the highest population areas?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    I believe it’s a public good and we deserve it regardless of profit. Just like mail. Though I think prioritizing high population areas is worthwhile in part due to the fact that it will help fund the unprofitable bits.

    But the current air travel system cannot be sustained long term. Whether by willful decarbonization or by lack of oil in the ground airplanes will have to move towards alternative fuel sources. On one hand there’s hydrogen but I’m a huge supporter of using rail as a more efficient and affordable solution if we build the infrastructure in.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The US spends way more per Capita on healthcare than most developed nations. Where are you getting your stats?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    For medical care, the US government actually spends a bunch on healthcare on par with most other countries

    I think he’s technically correct, by virtue of lying by omission. US government spends money on devices like Medicare and Veterans Services that are much less expensive (although I’m sure still obscene) vs US spends a lot more than anyone else by virtue of privately funded services with Multiple levels of profit-making for most of us. As always the only real answer is that it’s more complicated than anyone expects

    -- as an employed citizen with a family, my employer and I pay a stupendous amount for my healthcare and everything I spend includes multiple levels of profit taking

    -- as a retired Veteran, my ex father-in-law pays nothing for medical care. He uses services paid by US Government, with fewer layers and no profit taking. As the largest user of services such as drugs, they can negotiate better rates. Granted, service can be poor but that’s directly related to insufficient funding

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Maybe North America but Europe is larger than the US and especially the contiguous US. There are also a shit ton of different countries in Europe which all have different laws and standards which are not easy to work with. They seemed to be able to do just fine. Although they did not cater near as much to auto manufacturers and rip up rail line we did in the US.

    As for medical care, the US spends significantly more per person (19% of GDP vs 10-11% for most others) and you are correct that the main reason for that is bloated medical companies.

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