{"id":13970,"date":"2025-08-09T12:59:24","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T19:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=13970"},"modified":"2025-08-24T13:01:32","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T20:01:32","slug":"more-robber-barons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2025\/08\/09\/more-robber-barons\/","title":{"rendered":"More Robber Barons?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.commonplace.org\/p\/maybe-our-railroads-need-some-robber\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">from Commonplace<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Maybe Our Railroads Need Some Robber Barons<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>Is Florida\u2019s Brightline a remedy for our ailing rail system?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!FzR9!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa3b9e96a-825b-4551-8719-41932291ec74_5760x3840.heic\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Americans like to believe we have the best of everything. But there\u2019s one exception where people are willing to admit we fall short: high-speed rail. Americans travel to Europe or Japan or China, enjoy their high-speed rail experience, and wonder why we don\u2019t have that here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Amtrak\u2019s Acela line in the Northeastern United States technically has sections that reach high-speed service levels but is far below the global standard. An Amtrak-led consortium says that it would\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nj.com\/news\/2021\/07\/inside-the-117b-plan-to-make-the-northeast-corridor-a-high-speed-rail-contender.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">cost $117 billion<\/a>\u00a0to upgrade the line to a true high-speed service. This is a cost level that\u2019s far out of line with global norms, but sadly consistent with the extraordinary costs we\u2019ve come to expect from American rail projects. The\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>\u00a0once called the Second Avenue Subway extension in New York\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/12\/28\/nyregion\/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the most expensive mile of subway track on earth<\/a>\u00a0for example. American rail projects cost multiples of what other countries spend; the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>, for example, notes that the East Side Access rail project in New York was seven times the global average construction cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[ <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commonplace.org\/p\/maybe-our-railroads-need-some-robber\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">click to continue reading at Commonplace<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from Commonplace Maybe Our Railroads Need Some Robber Barons Is Florida\u2019s Brightline a remedy for our ailing rail system? Americans like to believe we have the best of everything. But there\u2019s one exception where people are willing to admit we fall short: high-speed rail. Americans travel to Europe or Japan or China, enjoy their high-speed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}