Noam Chomsky (8 of 11) at Riverside Church, NYC Video

The entire talk is at booktv.org, search on "Chomsky" last aired June 21, 2009.
Friday, June 12, 2009. The camera battery runs out with 6 minutes and 16 seconds of the talk remaining.
Sorry about video quality, zoom was not working and had furthest seat away. Further apologies for the camera battery conking out right near the end of the talk with 6 minutes, 16 seconds remaining.

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KentAllard: Acela is a joke. Besides its having to use private freight railways and state comuter railways, slowing it down dramatically-averages 135km/h between DC & New York, 80km/h between New York & Boston-its basic specifications are quite sub-par to that found in Europe & Asia.

KentAllard: attempt to soften the blow of cuts in defense following draw down from Vietnam Carter gave Boeing a contract to build a tram in the '70s, idea being it would save costs for cities that used them: Standard Light Rail Vehicle. The thing was a lemon, Noam should know because the Boston city council sued Boeing to get out of the contract, recoup money spent purchasing them & repairing chronic breakdowns. So the idea that since they manufacture X they can manufacture Y may not be quite so simple.

KentAllard: I'm not to sure how much those European companies could stand to make, the US has some very strange regulations regarding high speed rail found nowhere else in the world - this became an issue when the contracts for the Acela were first being tended and ICE, TGV, etc quickly found they couldn't simply port over one of their trains. Bombadier got the contract and they were built in Canada.

KentAllard: It ended up having to be an original design to take into account the unique regulations in the USA. That would have increased the cost. This little issue probably would have been discovered in '93 if TGVs "Texas Triangle" railway had been allowed to go ahead (can you guess which industry lobbied against it?)

lonelycubicle: Thanks for your comments. Looks like you've done your research!

KentAllard: But on the other hand, the 2400 series train they built for Chicagos elevated network has been worked fine since it entered service in the mid-1970s. As far as I know anyway. So perhaps the US SLRV was just a case of "too many cooks in the kitchen"

Author: lonelycubicle; Uploaded: Jun 14, 2009; Duration: 7:36; Views: 447

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