Drew Dowdell

Dwight, I think he meant he'd like to see the 3.6 offered in the Equinox

Already posted Government Motors No More

dirty injector or failing fuel pump?

I picked the 3.6 so it would be different from the Regal. Let the Regal have the turbo charged 4-cylinders.

I don't know about you, but I really would have liked to see a Malibu SS of the current generation. Give it the 3.6 in 305hp form, AWD, and 6-speed manual or auto. Revised front and rear facia, lower ride height...... make mine black please.

I doubt GM would resurrect GMPD just for the Aveo and Cruze. There's more up their sleeve I'm sure.

But in the meantime, till some RWD lustwagons are available, let GMPD get back into the game on these two.

Like the Colorado or Tahoe? The CTS-V is already done... no other RWD left.

Isn't part of the problem with rail subsides then just with lack of use... and that lack of use is caused by poor service due to poor funding? On lines where Amtrak was able to make the investment into high speed rail, they are bursting at the seams with ridership. They have over 50% market share in DC and NYC. People aren't unwilling to use rail, they're just unwilling to pay for crap service. Taking the Capitol Limited from Pittsburgh to DC is plenty cheap enough, but the only departure Denver has great air service because it has a great airport. Pittsburgh has mediocre air service despite having a great airport (regularly considered in the top 10) because no one wants the hassle of driving out that far. Right now, Amtrak has just enough subsidy to keep them alive and barely functioning but until early last year, nothing to make any substantial hardware upgrades with. Imagine if an infrastructure service, fairly vital to the country's needs (as all major modes of transportation are) were last overhauled in 1991. The whole system was operating on Windows 3.1 computers, which were state of the art at the time. But while other infrastructure services got eventual upgrades to Win 95, Win XP (new airports or substantially upgraded ones), this infrastructure services was told it'd have to learn to fend for itself and it would have to do it's own upgrades while it's competition got them for free. Listen, I can completely sympathize with your "no subsidies" position.... but don't pick on rail just because they're currently the underdog and they've been kicked and neglected since birth.

Have you just checked the fluid level at all? It could simply be low. If it's low, you probably need at least a gasket change... but if you're going to do that, do the filter too.

OMG, you're always going to be able to find an example of it not working. Air travel has a very high fixed cost that is subsidized by the government! On top of that, it's less energy efficient per passenger. I'm sure you'll return with some obscure statistic about a diesel powered rail line in upstate New Hampshire or something that is somehow less efficient per passenger... but it's not relevant because it isn't indicative of a modern normalized system. If you want to fight against public subsidies, fine, but you can't single out rail while ignoring 41% of the Interstate's yearly budget that DOES NOT COME FROM THE GAS TAX. You can't ignore the massive subsidies given to air travel.

It's as if Apple was trying it's hand at making a modern version of Falling Water

Lots of great shots..... good shots of Pittsburgh too!

Oh yeah... cause I can't think of a better way to deal with claustrophobia than cramming into a two story bus with 1,500 people.

A mobile traffic constrictor is what it is.....

If this were Price is Right! Reg would be the only partial winner. Aztek - $12,995 Ranger - $9999 Reg gets to pick next.

One more guess and I reveal the prices.

We should turn this into a game. Guess the asking price! Find an advertisement - Name the vehicle, mileage, and major amenities (drive train, engine, leather or not) and we guess the asking price. I'll start with a few: 2004 Pontiac Aztec - 38k miles - V6 FWD - Cloth interior 2003 Ford Ranger - 135k miles - V6 M/T 4WD - Cloth Interior

I wish I could have... I just didn't have the means at the time.

The ways trains get more efficient: 1. Add cars - simplest and most effective way to increase fuel economy per passenger. There are of course limits. You can't simply continue to add cars without also adding locomotive power. Still, almost all electric locomotives are far more powerful than generally needed, the high speed ones especially so. A typical electric locomotive can yank around a 15 car train as if it were paper. The second problem with adding cars is station platform length. This is a relatively easy work around since certain cars can be designated for passengers headed to certain destinations. At those destinations, only the designated cars will have platform access. 2. Train splitting and grouping - trains can be scheduled to combine and split at certain stops. For example, a train from Cleveland and a train from Columbus both heading to Washington DC can meet in Pittsburgh. The cars are combined and a single locomotive and crew takes the train the rest of the way to D.C. The process would be reversed for the return trip. 3. Motor Coaches - In electric trains, most of the dirty bits are actually under the locomotive. After space is taken for the engineer, 75% of the locomotive is available for passenger seating. 4. Double Decker and wide body cars - currently few <any?> of the HS rail lines use double decker cars 5. Train "sets" - This concept has been around since the 1930 but never widely adopted in the US until the Acela went into service. Passenger trains sets are actually a set of 3 - 5 permanently coupled cars. Having this arrangement reduces the number of wheels on the rail by 30%. Doing so reduces rolling friction and wear on the tracks. Train sets don't preclude train splitting mentioned in point 2 because independent sets can be controlled from a single cab. Extra locomotives can be left in "neutral" when not needed, engaged if encountering an increasing grade, or engage regenerative braking during a descending grade... which bring us to 6. Regenerative braking - Diesel locomotives have used something called dynamic braking since the 1940s... but all they did was exhaust the excess heat into the air. The Virginian railway experimented, and was successful, with using a descending train to power an ascending train. Most of the modern HS rail trainsets use regenerative braking, but only in their locomotive units. Increasing the regenerative braking to all axles of a train set would greatly increase it's regenerative capacity when used as the primary braking source. Additionally, railroad regenerative braking with electric locomotives suffers no weight penalty from batteries like hybrid automobiles do. The electricity goes back up into the wire and directly feeds another train.

I think C4C is only a small factor here. I don't think the market for '89 Devilles that were selling for $3,000 is really going to affect the market for newish Fusions, Tauruses and Malibus... I can see it being a factor for trucks though as C4C probably took a load of 80s and 90s F-150s, CK1500s, and Rams off the road.

I've seen 2002 Bravadas with 65k miles and they're asking $16k or $17k! Used Avalanche prices are insane, they have to be one of the best residuals out there. 2008s with 35k seem to be asking mid to high 30s for! I nearly spit Dr. Pepper on my screen when a reply to an email about a '07 Ranger 4x4 V6 5-speed and 43k came back with a price quote of $17k!!

Mobility is freedom and stimulates the economy... but to your exact point, cheaper for everyone. Cheaper for riders, cheaper for Amtrak, and yes cheaper for the tax payers. In fact, it's even cheaper for drivers as well. As less traffic, there is less wear and tear on the roads. New roads don't have to be sized as large and thus can cost less to develop. You absolutely don't understand why rail failed. It has much more to do with legacy costs and is vaguely similar to GM's march towards bankruptcy than towards any "stuck in the victorian era" fantasy you might have. It's a subsidy because EVERYTHING you buy feeds into that fund in some way. Bought a cell phone? It was shipped by truck, the cell towers are maintained by guys in trucks, the CEO drives to his office on a highway and his fuel costs are expended. If the tax is so vastly ubiquitous that there is no escaping it, it ceases to be a user fee and is just a plain old tax. Fine. Then yank ALL of the taxpayer funded benefits the Airlines get. Your assertions that highways are paid for via user fees is uninformed also: In 2001, 41% of the $133 billion spent on highways came from payments other than the gas tax, tolls, and vehicle taxes and fees, as follows: 15.3% general fund appropriations; 9.5% bond issue proceeds; 5.8% investment income and other receipts; 5.6% other taxes and fees; 4.8% property taxes. So you'll have to yank $54b, at least, from the highway budget to comply with your "user fees only" policy. How do you think that's going to work out? No one is commanding anyone. HS Rail will still have to compete for customers just like any other method of travel. The transporation situation we're in today is because of "statist central planners" heavily favoring air and automobile traffic. You favor a "user fees only" method of funding. That's a perfectly valid point of view.... but are you prepared to have a massive gas tax and/or tolls on major roads to replace the 41% of highway funding that would evaportate? Are you prepared to pay drastically more for your airline ticket to fund the airports, air traffic control, customs, and security? .... just so you can win your little jihad against rail? I think they should be shut down if they're doing things illegally. My suspicion is they are skipping a required maintenance check or driver exam here and there to make ends meet. I'm not against competition. Where the hell did that come from? The city center to city center argument comes from the fact that most metro areas, the center of population gravity is downtown. For the most cities, it is more convenient to get downtown than it is to get to some outskirts airport. My experience with Reagen was that it took me a 45 minute subway ride to get to Union Station... and my hotel was two blocks from there. It is more convenient than most other airports out there.... but it's not like getting to Union Station in DC. The airlines have only recently had an incentive to absolutely maximize fuel efficiency. On top of that, until very recently, there haven't been any major jumps in fuel efficiency since the early 80s. Hybrid locomotives are already being released... and rail has the ability to add energy per passenger efficiency simply by adding cars. (there are often infrastructure limitations to this but there are work arounds). Either way, you're wrong that locomotives aren't getting any more energy efficient. I have a meeting in 10 minutes, so I'll have to provide links when I come back.

Yeah, you're essentially coming in the back way. Come from just about anywhere "metro" and you have to cross a river, go through a tunnel, or both. These structure Blow. Pittsburgh. Drivers'. Tiny. Little. Minds.

Terrain does indeed play a factor, which is why HS rail isn't suited for all routes. I'm not familiar enough with the proposed route in CA, but I do assume a large part of the extra high cost is tunnel and bridge associated. A big thing would be the need for moderate speed rail (90mph-110mph) in lieu of HS rail (150mph-180mph) to connect those smaller places. Keep in mind that moderate speed rail is still pretty good. A trip from Pittsburgh to DC (my typical benchmark if you've noticed) would be about 3 hours.... it would still beat air time and cost, but would be much cheaper to build. Seriously? Try again. Highways are most certainly subsidized. Just because the tax is paid at the pump instead of out of your IRS withholding doesn't mean it's not subsidized. It's subsidized by every purchase you make that was shipped over the highways. Anything you buy at Amazon.com subsidizes the Interstate. But still, I'm not saying I want to eliminate highways... I want to supplement them. It's adding a choice for travelers. It's allowing more mobility. Aren't choice and population mobility two of your pet causes? Even 150mph is doable and would be competative. It's easy to run super cheap NYC-DC buses when you're doing it illegally. More then one of those buses has been impounded in NYC already. I"m still trying to figure out the economics of them. I don't see how they pay for fuel much less driver, maintenance, and equipment costs. No, not really. Population density around airports is typically a lot lower than downtown areas. Think about getting out to Reagen National... unless you happen to live within a few miles of it, getting to the airport is going to be a chore. You're either going to have to drive yourself (and pay through the ass to park), take a cab, take a car service, or take a Blue line train. If you're limited to public transit in the DC area, you most likely have an easier time getting to Union Station that Reagan National. Same is true here in Pittsburgh. I can be at Pennsylvania Station in 15 minutes by bus... a vast majority of the city can do it in under 30 minutes even with our craptastic transit system. Unless you're in the southwestern part of Pittsburgh, getting to the airport will take you at least 45 minutes by car and over an hour by bus. For me personally, it's a 2 hour trek because I have to change buses in downtown and there is a wait between them. I think CA might be a bit different from the rest of the nation in that regard. The number of roadtrips to Las Vegas alone is enough to distort that number. The increase in Airline fuel economy is only because they are being forced to retire older planes. Most of the "commuter" lines run jets that are at least 15 years old. You could still see 30+ year old 737s coming in and out of LGA (they have a distinctive engine shape and note) as recently as 2008. The 737 is one of the most popular jet liners in service... but it'd been around forever. As they get phased out there will be a large jump in efficiency.