> <i>The report’s authors estimated the initial cost of protecting the study area to be $78 million, based on the premise that water levels around Wilmington would rise 2 feet by 2050.</i><p>That's a drop in the bucket compared to Amtrak's $38 billion maintenance backlog or the $13 billion Hudson tunnel project.<p>Out of all the potential effects of climate change, this seems like one of the least worrisome -- we even know how to fix it already!
> Water levels around Wilmington would rise 2 feet by 2050. That reflects the median of possible warming scenarios<p>2 feet is the median!? And things continue to accelerate?<p>I thought I followed climate change issues but somehow did not know that in most people's lifetimes sea levels will rise multiple feet. I would've thought folks would be more... concerned? The maps of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut look like they are going to cost us billions to trillions to mitigate between now and 2100.
This is nothing compared to the estimated $3.5 billion to redirect the tracks underground in San Diego. Coastal bluff failures are occurring within several feet of the tracks on a regular basis. I spend time at this beach and I don't know how this track will be viable in a couple years, with or without rising sea levels. Once it is deemed unsafe, San Diego will be completely cut off by rail.<p><a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sd-del-mar-bluffs-20181216-story.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sd-del-mar-bluf...</a>
Even a decade ago, some long stretches through connecticut reminded me a lot of the tramway sequence in <i>Spirited Away</i>: <a href="https://vimeo.com/91985775" rel="nofollow">https://vimeo.com/91985775</a>
The US east coast has post-glacial rebound and Atlantic meridional overturning circulation slowdown to compound their sea-level problems. But most the rise is nothing special compared the rest of the world, which is the worst part of this.
“More than a year and a half later, Amtrak, a private company <i>whose stock is primarily owned by the federal government and which depends on congressional funding to operate</i>, has yet to repeat its analysis for the network as a whole.”<p>So, _not_ a private company.<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/2015/03/09/dd125130-c691-11e4-aa1a-86135599fb0f_story.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/2015/03/0...</a><p>(From 2015 – Supreme Court says Amtrak is more like a public entity than a private firm)<p>""
All the justices agreed to overturn the lower-court ruling in which the Association of American Railroads had prevailed at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit: that Amtrak was a strictly private entity and as such Congress was wrong in 2008 to set up a system that allowed it to issue regulations.<p>The lower court had based the decision on Congress’s command that Amtrak “is not a department, agency or instrumentality of the United States Government.”<p>But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said saying so does not necessarily make it so.<p>The government puts all sorts of demands on Amtrak — maintaining service between Louisiana and Florida, for instance, or offering reduced fares for elderly or disabled passengers — not to mention giving it subsidies of about $1 billion a year, Kennedy said.<p>“Amtrak was created by the Government, is controlled by the Government, and operates for the Government’s benefit,” Kennedy wrote. Thus, in working with the Federal Railroad Administration to issue the “metrics and standards” for performance, “Amtrak acted as a governmental entity for purposes of the Constitution’s separation of powers provisions.”
""<p>In Ireland we call entities like this <i>semi-state</i> companies: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_bodies_of_the_Republic_of_Ireland" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_bodies_of_the_...</a>
I was on a road trip throughout a lot of different parts of America last month. A park ranger in Big Bend told me that a tributary creek of the Rio Grande was a hundred feet wide, when normally you can just jump over it. A lakeside highway rest area in North Carolina was flooded up to a permanently mounted bench and trash can.
Blessing in disguise here for Amtrack and a great opportunity to do an overhaul of a subset of the one of the oldest railroad infrastructure in the USA. Many lessons we can learn from European counterparts.
Rather than thinking like a train company, wondering how to protect or move the tracks, what if they thought like a transportation company, and figured out how to move the same and projected number of people?<p>Although if climate inaction generally prevails, eventually the area won't be viable for that many people to live, work and commute. Problem solved.
Speaking of Amtrack with such fast news cycle, did they find out the cause of two recent crashes (I believe New Jersey /Connecticuit) ? Ine over some oassage-bridge. I cant find anything on it anymore.
It will be interesting to see how fast Boring company progresses and if that will be a scalable solution. If there is going to be a large capital investment, it would be great if it also sped up travel times.
As a very frequent Amtrak rider, I’m pretty conflicted here. On one hand, climate change is bad. On the other hand, giving the Amtrak fleet a bath, or altogether destroying it sounds pretty good to me.