The United States should make a trans-continental monorail for human transportation

Okay, let's get down to business. First off, let's start with a refutation of PRO's arguments. R.1 Status QuoThis point is about how Americans are not riding the train system anymore. Obviously, this is because there are much better options of travel than train, such as plane or car. With no need to ride the train, there is obviously no need to build a transcontinental railway system, as why build a railway system for human transportation, when no one rides it? Furthermore, PRO mentions "Americans are not riding the current train system anymore. "This suggests that America already has a train system for human transportation. Therefore, why build another? Clearly that is illogical. Building another duplicate system is illogical and useless, especialy since no one rides trains anymore. Therefore, this point clearly supports my case. Please be reminded PRO, that you are arguing for building another train system. R.2 CostNow, PRO says that monorails are really cheap. That would usually be true, if the monorail has been around for a long time. However, this monorail would just be built, and the tickets must be high in the beginning in order to recover manufacturing costs. Therefore, PRO's argument about cheap-ness is not valid, as it would be much more expensive, like all products, when it is just introduced. R.3 SpeedNow PRO thinks a travel time of 2 days is fast. That is not true. Compare that to a plane flight, which takes only a few hours. In today's business world, time is money. Therefore, using the basic economic principle of opportunity cost, the time spent traveling via rail could have been used to make money. For example, it took you two days to travel. However, during that two days, you could have worked making money. Compare that to plane travel, when you only use a few hours for travel and can spend alot more working and making money. Therefore, using opportunity cost, train travel costs a lot more than air travel, as you are spending two days not doing anything, as compared to a few hours. Furthermore, PRO puts a lot of faith into scientists. Monorails have been around for a while, and it is obvious that if a faster one was discovered, we would build one. Because no new monorails have been built yet, it is logical to assume that scientists have not discovered how to build a fast monorail. Furthermore, a faster monorail is not a priority for scientists. In todays world, we must combat global warming, world hunger, nuclear warfare, etc. Monorails would be at the bottom of the to do list. Therefore, it would take much longer to actually come out with a new monorail system. Therefore, the conclusion that scientists would constructg a faster monorail is invalid. R.4 Environmentally friendlyYes, that might be true, but think about it logically. You said yourself in the first observation that Americans do not ride monorail systems. What is the point of spending millions of dollars on a system that might be environmentally friendly, but no one rides on it? It would be a failed investment. There is no incentive to ride the monorail system. It is slow. It is an old fashioned way of travel. Simply put, it may be super environmentally friendly, but Americans do not care about that. . http://www.marcgunther.com...Americans do not care about going green. Therefore, this advantage has no use. R.5 ConvinienceThis point was really about how monorails are sort of fast and cheap, and will help tourism. However, as I pointed out, there is a much larger opportunity cost to monorail travel, that makes it much more exensive that aircraft. While they are sort of fast compared to other methods, it is slow compared to aircraft. Therefore, the vehicle of choice would be the plane. Also, PRO talks about tourism. But why can't plane travel help tourism as well? This benefit is not unique to the monorail system. Furthermore, if no one has the incentive to ride the monorail, as I pointed out that it is slow, and people don't care about the environment, then it would not open tourism at all, actually. Therefore, this is not a benefit. R.6 Set upPRO claims that the monorail will be cheap and fast to set up, and uses the Las Vegas example to support this. I must rremind PRO that the las vegas monorail was not transcontinental, which means across the entire nation. I must point out that that Alaska is part of the US nation. Therefore, we must have a monorail extending from Las Vegas to Alaska, as that would be encompassing the entire nation. This size is much bigger than the size of Las Vegas, and as a result, it would take much more money and much more time to set up. Therefore, this would not be an advantage to the monorail. R7 SafetyPRO claims that monorails are safer than any other transportation method. However, that is blatantly false. PRO pointed out that this monorail would run on electricity. I must point out that black outs and power outages are very frequent, and occur much more frequently than the examples he listed. Therefore, during a power outage, you would be stuck in the middle of no-where, with a limited food supply. Blackouts can last up to several days, and this is especially unsafe, as there is limited supplies on the train. Furthermore, trains, like planes can be hijacked and derailed, therefore, safety is not a benefit of monorail systems. ConclusionI have proven that each of PRO's supposed benefits are not benefits at all. Therefore, I have proven that monorail systems have no real benefits. With no real benefits, there is no point of making a multi million dollar system. Furthermore, I have shown, with PRO's agreement, that Americans do not ride trains anymore. This is another reason that there is no point in investing in an obviously failing asset. Therefore, we should not build a monorail system.