# Kill HSR report on AnnArbor.com



## PerRock (Jan 23, 2012)

Basic premise of most reports. However most comments seem to be against him & point out some flaws in his 'logic'.

http://annarbor.com/news/opinion/spending-money-on-a-high-speed-rail-system-in-michigan-is-an-ill-conceived-idea/

peter


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## George Harris (Jan 24, 2012)

The guy starts out, "And as a young engineer with a masters degree in transportation engineering from Purdue University and a bachelors degree in civil engineering from the University of Michigan, . . ." That alone gives him a credibility problem.

Maybe he will be thinking differently when he can write something like "as an engineer with years of experience in the design and costruction of rail transportion project, I have see the trasition from "it costs too much, it takes too long to build and no one will ever ride it" to "how did we ever manage without it?" take place more than once, and in fact with every rail transportation project I have been part of, and see no reason why it will not continue to happen on any well thought out rail transportation project.'

In other words, he has yet to make the transition from an academic perspective that has been fed to him to a perspective based on reality.

Oh yeah, let us not forget: The non-users also benefit as there is less traffic to contend with when they choose to drive instead of taking the trains.


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## AlanB (Jan 24, 2012)

George,

As I and a few other posters on that story have pointed out, he's also made several critical errors in things. Starting with his linking to a document that quite clearly states that the trains will run at 110 MPH very early on in the document. But then our hero goes on to do his calculations based upon the trains topping out at 79 MPH.


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## George Harris (Jan 24, 2012)

AlanB said:


> George,
> 
> As I and a few other posters on that story have pointed out, he's also made several critical errors in things. Starting with his linking to a document that quite clearly states that the trains will run at 110 MPH very early on in the document. But then our hero goes on to do his calculations based upon the trains topping out at 79 MPH.


Yes. Maybe I have developed a suspicious mind about this sort of stuff to the point that I no longer consider that sort of error to be accidental. If he made taht sort of error accidentally, it says that engineering education has fallen a long way in this country.


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