On 6 Dec 2020 at 0:50, Peri Hartman via EV wrote: > there would be fewer workers from longshoremen to rig drivers and, > therefore, the unions would fight hard against it.
I'm not so sure. After 40 years of union busting, it seems to me that other than police unions, US unions don't have much remaining power. > (I think a plan like this would have to include a retraining and > placement program for displaced workers.) That's a good idea that never seems to work very effectively. Whether it's fundamentally flawed or just never implemented right, I don't know, but my admittedly limited observation is that when well-paid workers are displaced by progress, most of them end up in low-pay and low-skill jobs no matter how hard anyone tries. But for better and/or worse, human costs have never stopped progress. They certainly don't when large, wealthy corporations stand to gain still more wealth from such progress. Much as I hate to see people hurt, if human costs stopped progress, we'd have precious little of the latter. > As for passenger service, I don't think it precludes it at all. Nothing > would prevent using the existing model of sharing the rails with Amtrak. Hmm, maybe I misunderstood the concept here. I thought we were still talking about laying rails down the center of a dedicated highway lane. But you and Lee seem to be proposing something different. It sounds like semitrailers would be fitted with rail trucks (wheel units) so they could drive onto existing tracks, engage the tracks, disengage the road wheels, and travel in unlinked, computer-controlled convoys. Presumably these convoys would somehow be under the same control as trains are, so they could properly share the tracks. Do I have that right? David Roden, EVDL moderator & general lackey To reach me, don't reply to this message; I won't get it. Use my offlist address here : http://evdl.org/help/index.html#supt = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has. --William Burroughs = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub ARCHIVE: http://www.evdl.org/archive/index.html INFO: http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
