bman wrote >>
A train going 35 miles an hour top speed isn't going to cut it.
Good thing that the train system currently being proposed has a top speed of 79mph! The 39mph number that everyone is throwing around is the average speed for an end-to-end trip (Cleve to Cinci) that includes all stops in between. (The 35mph number is something Corby pulled out of his ass to make the train sound even less appealing). The existing tracks and trains also have the ability for a 110-mph top speed without upgrades. The thing holding the speed back is negotiations with timetables with freight rail that shares the tracks. More on that here:
http://www.columbusunderground.com/forums/topic/3c-corridor-upgrade-to-110mph-doesnt-require-expensive-track-replacement
bman wrote >> Corby also laid out some good points on the price and the HUGE EFFORT once off of the train i.e. cab/transportion etc...
I'd disagree that those are "good points". Traveling via plane requires a greater amount of effort to reach your final destination as most airports are located in a non-centralized location. Arriving in Downtown Cleveland or Cincinnati gives you easy access to bus, cab, walking, and rail in the case of Cleveland (and possibly streetcar soon in the case of Cincinnati). Not to mention that you can always have someone pick you up, just like many people do with airport travel. It's hardly a "HUGE" effort.
As far as the price goes... yes, it might not make financial sense for a family of four to load up into a train and pay the per-person fare for a round trip (proposed to be somewhere between $40-50 to Cleveland). The drive from Columbus to Cleveland is 142 miles one way, so according to AAA, the cost to drive a car round trip at $0.55 per mile makes it a $156.20 trip by car. So that's slightly cheaper for a car containing four people. What it's NOT cheaper than is a car traveling with one person in it. If I'm a business person in Columbus and I need to send an employee to Cleveland for the day, am I going to want to reimburse them $160 for car travel or $40-50 for train travel? Currently, that's a choice that we can't even make.
What Corby (and many other detractors) fail to recognize is that train travel is about providing OPTIONS and ALTERNATIVES. What doesn't make sense for one person makes total sense for another. Making a judgment call based on your own personal circumstances is completely missing the bigger picture for providing transit services to a state of 11 million individuals.
bman wrote >> I would rather personally at this time see a subway system or something here in Columbus, have Cleveland and Cincy get to a subway system then link the cities with rail and link to Chicago etc...
This type of argument is probably the most detrimental thing to rail development in Central Ohio. When Light Rail was proposed over 10 years ago, a lot of people shot it down because they wanted to see the 3C or streetcars first. When Streetcars were proposed 3 years ago, a lot of people shot it down because they'd rather see light rail first. We can endlessly continue this cycle and never decide upon a "first step" that everyone agrees on, or we can take the first step that makes the most sense right now (the one that we've been given $400M in stimulus money to build that can't be used for anything else) and then start working on steps 2 and 3 and 4.
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