South Korea closes Incheon Airport high-speed rail line . . . NO

By Leroy W. Demery, Jr.

A news story, published online at 2018 August by several outlets, states that South Korea had decided to close its “high-speed rail” line between Seoul and Incheon International Airport. This claim was repeated by several highly unreliable anti-rail sources in the United States and elsewhere, though it was incorrect.

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Recollections of a Vanished Era – In Mississippi

By Leroy W. Demery, Jr.

Certain of our loyal and disloyal opponents love to quote statistics by the trainload (pun intended) – but avoid certain issues like the proverbial “third rail” (pun intended – again).

You are not likely to see anything related to, um, Amerikaanse apartheid (“American apartheid”) on websites such as this one, that one or that one. To paraphrase Oscar Bonavena, the late Argentine boxer, you’d think they were chicken (“Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!”).

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”Autonomous” Battery Buses Replace Trolleybuses in Japan…Well, NO

Editor’s note: This article illustrates how press reports are often highly inaccurate and lack context, reflecting sloppy and lazy journalism.

By Leroy W. Demery, Jr.

During the first couple of weeks of October, I spotted at least one story line stating that “trolleybuses” had been replaced by “autonomous battery buses” in Japan.

The specific reference was to the “Kanden Tunnel” line, which is part of the “Tateyama – Kurobe Alpine Route” in Toyama and Nagano Prefectures. This extends from an open-air station named Ogizawa to an underground station at Kurobe Dam. The distance is 6.1 km, of which 5.4 km is in tunnel. The line operates from mid-April to late November.

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“Near HSR” “Magistrala CFR 800” (Line 800) – in Romania

Translation of heading above: “”Minimum Duration of the Train Journey” for each year, in hours.

By Leroy W. Demery, Jr.

In the last few years, Romania has outdone the United States on implementing “near high-speed rail” on one of its major intercity passenger rail routes from Constana to Bucharest. Romania has managed to implement good service spending a fraction of the capital poured into the Northeast Corridor, for example.

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Why Public Transit?

Anti-Transit Arguments Are Mostly Rhetoric, Lacking Facts

Over the years, we have grown weary of the many rhetorical, generally fact-free arguments against transit. These include the ubiquitous “You’ll never get people out of their cars,” “People won’t ride transit,” or a favorite of rail transit opponents, “There isn’t enough patronage potential to justify rail.” Such arguments are almost exclusively rhetorical in nature, lacking specific facts and examples.

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Annotated Response to “Antiplanner” Post: No. 50. Lessons from an Iconoclast

By Michael D. Setty & Leroy W. Demery, Jr.

Note: This article responds to Randal O’Toole’s April 17, 2020 post on his “Antiplanner” blog. We believe this requires a detailed response since O’Toole is outlining lessons he says he has learned in his past four decades as a public intellectual. We find that some of O’Toole’s assertions are valid, but most are not.

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