A day in the life of Fox News

[Arrian]

Pigovian Taxes

Generally, I agree with KH that I'd rather tax a negative externality (and thus internalize it and put things on an even playing field) and then let the market do its thing. But really big infrastructure projects have historically been helped along by the government and I think it was probably that way for a reason (or multiple reasons).

I'm pretty skeptical about the profitability of passenger rail, partly because I don't think the aforementioned pigovian taxes are coming, partly because cars are just so wonderfully convenient, and partly because passenger rail hasn't been profitable in the US for so long it just seems like a pipe dream.

-Arrian

[Hauldren Collider]

The whole high speed rail idea reeks of a pipe dream. There are so many lower hanging fruit for just about every goal they want to achieve that it seems like they only want it because they have a fetish for trains.

[Cort Haus]

Trains are a fantastic way to travel. You can get to see scenery, go for a walk, relax, sleep, drink beer, have decent legroom, decent air. Marvellous.

[C0ckney]

It's called Compulsory Purchase here, only Government or local government can do it I think (except for exceptional circumstances).

even then it doesn't always go through. i remember the swansea bendy bus route couldn't be extended to mumbles because one landowner just point blank refused to sell the land necessary for road modifications. although i don't blame him, because the bendy bus idea was ridiculous, why dig up all the roads, what's wrong with a normal bus.

[Tupac Shakur]

the swansea bendy bus route couldn't be extended to mumbles

And you ****ers claim to speak the civilized dialect of English...

[Cort Haus]

There's a long history of landowners being reluctant to co-operate with national infrastructure projects.

The Regents Canal, linking the London docks to the Grand Union Canal and up the Midlands was blocked by Lord Agar in St Pancras (now Camden) in the early 19th Century. He probably set back the progress of the industrial revolution by several years.

[Dinner]

I already mentioned eminent domain (which fyi can sometimes, in the us, be used to facilitate private projects).

Here's another example of how overly restrictive and dumb the eminent domain laws can be. In San Diego the area immediately south of the convention center is still mostly an industrial area with the (smallish) commercial port, south of that is the large National Steel & Ship Company (NASSCO) shipyard (which both builds new ships and repairs existing ships), and south of that is the Southwest Marine Drydocks (which is a company which repairs ships but doesn't have the facilities to build new ships). In the late 90's Southwest Marine announced they wanted to expand their facility to build a new shipyard so the company could both build ships as well as just repair existing ships. Naturally, the city loved the idea of a brand new shipyard coming to town since it would bring a lot of new high paying industrial jobs plus NASSCO's shipyard builds almost exclusively ships for the navy while Southwest Marine said they wanted to build commercial ships for private buyers (mostly tanker or merchant ships) so the city's industrial base would be diversified so that it wasn't so dependent on just orders from the navy. The catch was Southwest Marine would need to get a hold of the run down and vacant land around their current facility to build the actual shipyard as well as the warehouses to house the shipbuilding materials & they'd have to construct short rail road spur so that steel & parts for the ships could be delivered directly to the shipyard. The problem was the current owner didn't want to sell.

Now, the land itself was vacant with just a few old WW2 era navy warehouses on it but the owner was an out of state developer who was hoping they could eventually turn that ocean front property into expensive apartments even though the city had zoned the whole area for heavy industry. Originally the city tried to use E.D. to take the land claiming the area was blighted since the owner didn't even maintain the existing derelict warehouses but the owner quickly had the buildings painted and the broken windows fixed (which was the first time they'd done this in decades) so even though the buildings themselves remained empty the court ruled the owner was continuing to maintain the buildings so they couldn't be called derelict or blighted. That effectively stopped the entire plan to build a new shipyard. In 2008 the city finally negotiated an agreement with the out of state developer where the developer agreed to sell the city the land (at inflated prices which screwed the taxpayers) and in exchange the city agreed to give the go ahead on some other project the developer wanted (to give the city a bargaining chip the city council effectively was holding all of the developer's projects in the city hostage until the shipyard issue was resolved). The only problem is this agreement took the better part of a decade to resolve and during that time Southwest Marine got a new CEO and the world economy took a dump so now Southwest Marine no longer wants to build the shipyard. That means not only is the city out all those high pay industrial jobs we could have had if there weren't so many restrictions on the use of E.D. but also the taxpayers are now on the hook for paying an inflated price for land which we now have no buyer for. It's a huge cluster **** which could have been completely avoided if the restrictions on the use of E.D. weren't there; back in 2000 when Southwest Marine wanted to build a shipyard the city could have just used E.D. to take the land and by now we'd have the second shipyard up and running. Instead we have nothing other then a bill for land no one wants to buy from us.

[Tupac Shakur]

Well, that certainly didn't take long...

CONCERNS are mounting that rapid construction has compromised the safety of China's much-touted 13,000km high-speed rail network after its first major accident killed at least 43 people and injured hundreds more at the weekend.

A picture is beginning to emerge of a network that has been built to unrealistic and politically driven timetables, using a mix of technologies that were given little time to be properly integrated.

Fears China rail crash result of project cutting corners

[Tupac Shakur]

[MrFun]

MANY PEOPLE DIE EVERY YEAR FROM CAR ACCIDENTS!!!

WE NEED TO BAN CARS!!!

[Tupac Shakur]

I think that's a stupid overreaction, but you're free to your opinion.

[Hauldren Collider]

MANY PEOPLE DIE EVERY YEAR FROM CAR ACCIDENTS!!!

WE NEED TO BAN CARS!!!

We need to ban cars that don't have seatbelts and airbags, apparently. The Chinese have no such safety qualms, as demonstrated here.

[giblets]

Ah ha ha yeah. If a train accident occurs in China then "the Chinese" must not care about safety.

[MrFun]

I think that's a stupid overreaction, but you're free to your opinion.

I'm glad I have your permission.

[Tupac Shakur]

As you should be.