High-speed rail and the Maginot Line
Consider this backdrop when thinking about the US spending $50 billion on high-speed rail. Railroad tracks are forever, cities’ populations are not:
Dozens of American cities throughout the industrial Great Lakes states and Midwest have lost half of their populations over the course of one generation — places like Cleveland, Youngstown, Detroit, Warren, Buffalo and Flint. This is the first time that so many cities have lost half of their populations in such a short amount of time since the Plague struck Europe in 1348,
We’ve previously discussed the folly of spending so much for so little impact in this country of roads and suburbs and millions of square miles. But there’s yet another element: the idea of more railroads couldn’t be a worse intellectual fit for the times. Sputniks and trains are technologies 50-150 years past their heydays.
The internet is about massive decentralization of information and makes possible virtual companies and virtual communities. The internet empowers those who are spread out and cares little for centralization. Infrastructure should support that which creates increased productivity. A $50 billion fixed asset that is frozen in time is about as relevant to our future as the Maginot Line was to Germany’s battle strategy in WWII.
February 9th, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Maginot Line = French installed line of defense that Germans ran right through in WWII….
February 9th, 2011 at 2:52 pm
It makes perfect sense for the wealth extorting iron triangle of unions/politicians/hack contractors. None of them would make that kind of money/profit/pensions. Another extractor is the finance sector, the bond sellers. They need new debts to sell new ‘product’ to harvest their slice of the putrid fat pie of government spending.
It’s a nice scam. Private profit, public costs.
February 9th, 2011 at 5:22 pm
More to the point, what reason is there to travel between these cities?
If the train existed, and if it were cheap enough, I’d consider taking it from Syracuse to visit my siblings in Niagara Falls, once a year or so… Wait, the train will go to Buffalo so somebody would have to go to the station and pick us up and we wouldn’t have a car when we were in Niagara Falls.
Or I drive from Syracuse in under three hours, and it’s cheaper because I pay by the carload and I have my car while I’m there and I come and go on my schedule.
Of course we need to spend billions we don’t have for a train few will use.
Who dreams this stuff up?
February 9th, 2011 at 7:51 pm
Actually, Rob, the Germans went Around the Maginot line, not through it.
…the blitzkrieg through the Benelux countries into France…it was assumed that the rest of the world and the French could respond fast enough and with enough force to prevent such a sweep…
February 10th, 2011 at 9:34 am
Kalashnikat,
of course you’re right.. the Germans flanked the line, but my main point is of course, the OP’s statement giving the line to the Germans and not the French. Of course, after France fell, the Maginot line belonged to the Germans, but defended nothing.
February 11th, 2011 at 8:58 am
Friday morning links…
Fewer Want Spending to Grow, But Most Cuts Remain Unpopular Related, from Robinson: Republicans persistently underestimate the political costs of taking on the welfare state. Hannan: Banks are ordered to make more easy money available. Isn’t that what…
February 11th, 2011 at 10:28 am
Actually historic Old Venice had 160,000 people in 1960 and has 60,000 now
February 11th, 2011 at 11:42 am
I’ve read that after they went around the line, the Germans, as an exercise, did punch right through it.
From ask.com encyclopedia:
“During the advance to the English Channel, the Germans overran France’s border defense with Belgium and several Maginot Forts in the Maubeuge area, whilst the Luftwaffe simply flew over it. On May 19, the German 16th Army successfully captured petit ouvrage La Ferte (southeast of Sedan) after conducting a deliberate assault by combat engineers backed up by heavy artillery. The entire French crew of 107 soldiers was killed during the action. On June 14, 1940, the day Paris fell, the German 1st Army went over to the offensive in “Operation Tiger” and attacked the Maginot Line between St. Avold and Saarbrücken. The Germans then broke through the fortification line as defending French forces retreated southward. In the following days, infantry divisions of the 1st Army attacked fortifications on each side of the penetration; successfully capturing four petits ouvrages. The 1st Army also conducted two attacks against the Maginot Line further to the east in northern Alsace. One attack successfully broke through a weak section of the Line in the Vosges Mountains, but a second attack was stopped by the French defenders near Wissembourg. On 15 June, infantry divisions of the German 7th Army attacked across the Rhine River in Operation “Small Bear”, penetrating the defenses and capturing the cities of Colmar and Strasbourg.”
February 11th, 2011 at 1:09 pm
RobM,
France’s battle strategy thought that the Maginot line was relevant
Our current leaders think that High Speed rail is relevant
Germany showed that the Maginot line wasn’t relevant
The future will show…
February 11th, 2011 at 5:31 pm
[...] High-speed rail and the Maginot Line (Hat Tip: Larwyn) [...]
February 12th, 2011 at 12:03 am
Follow the money