Lawmakers in California approved billions of dollars Friday in construction financing for the initial segment of the nation’s first dedicated high-speed rail line connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco. The move marked a major political victory for Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and the Obama administration, which have promoted bullet trains as job generators and clean transportation alternatives. The bill authorizes the state to begin selling $4.5 billion in voter-approved bonds that includes $2.6 billion to build an initial 130-mile stretch of the high-speed rail line in the Central Valley.
California is bankrupt, so they are going to spend billions of dollars building a useless train line. If you want to get from the Bay Area to LA, you hop on a Southwest Airlines flight in San Jose, Oakland or San Francisco and you are in LA an hour later. It is cheap, easy and fast. Why would anyone want to take a high speed train which takes three times as long, goes a couple hundred miles out of the way through the Central Valley, and crosses the Hayward fault and the San Andreas fault?
Hollywood could have done the high speed crash following the inevitable earthquake more spectacular, less bloody and for many more viewers at a fraction of the cost.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/07/06/Is-Obamacare-Redistributing-Wealth-to-Big-Labor
ObamaTax is way worse.
“Socialized Medicine is the Keystone to the Arch of the Socialist State.”
-Vladimir Lenin
Japan runs high speed trains throughout the country. Japan is earthquake prone. Japan is about the size of California.
I’d like to know how one gets a one-hour flight. Drive, park, arrive two hours early, go through security, fly, disembark, wait for baggage, get car, drive.
We have the high speed line Barcelona -Madrid. It works perfect. From city center to city center in less time than by plane. As long as you don’t have the “arrive two hours early, go through security” part it will always be more rapit and not so invasive. You can arrive 5 min before the train leaves, no shoes off no micro oven no sex sorry tsa groping , you can bring all the liquid you want etc etc.
Build the line and people will no longer go by plane. As long as there is no shoes off no micro oven no sex sorry tsa groping , you can bring all the liquid you want etc etc.
There are also many people with fear of flying, like me.
In Madrid, you can get off and jump on a bus or a train (as long as terrorists haven’t blown the station up.) In LA, there is no mass transit so you have to rent a car. the place you rent a car is at the airport, so you take a plane.No one will use the train.
Steven you’re right. In Barcelona and Madrid we have the metro , no need to use a car.
What about terrorists blowing up stations I don’t believe that story unless you call your government a terrorist organisation. but who would do that, those are perfectly nice people there to help you. Madrid 11 M London 7-7 and New York 9-11 investigations had less money spent than the Monica Clinton case together .
Aye, you build a railway line and the British taxpayer pays for it.
I bet the train will be electric and all the experts will declare how efficient electric motors are. We are having the same fight here in the UK but I think our HS2 is all but dead as the cost will never be recouped and no one will use it. Diesel Trains are far more cost effective, no investment in overhead lines, and very low to zero emissions from the latest tier 4 rated engines. With electric you have to take account of the efficiency of the power station and the transmission loses which can often see more hydrocarbon fuel burnt that the diesel or indeed than by flying.
We just had a report out yesterday from the Commons accounts committee about how passenger numbers have been over estimated on the high speed rail from Dover to London, and only a third the estimated number of the passenger are using it. It’s too expensive, too slow and a blot on the landscape. Only a command economy would ever invest in one of these monstrosities, not a capitalist one.
Californian’s your work starts here to stop this. I never thought I would see such stupidity from the US, but perhaps we are all doomed.
Like Kalifornia I thought everything in UK was going to run on wind and solar power.
Cut to image of being stranded on a becalmed train at sundown.
You would be surprised at how fast all the green rubbish is being wound back in the UK. Just today another off shore wind farm was cancelled. The excuse was it would kill too many birds, but the reality is there is no money.
Ah, there it is, my flying car.
http://www.monomobile.com/
video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy-9Qj4QSMM&feature=BFa&list=PLBED3B31B82A96E47
How is a high-speed train any more stupid than the “electric” highway on the west coast with charging stations for the much reviled Chevy Volt? As I understand it, you can drive maybe 60 miles, then stop 25 minutes and recharge the car. Yet somewhere the news found a couple of people to say how wonderful the idea is and how they love their Chevy Volts. All of it makes sense in the fantasy world these people live in. I would guess that next one puts in playgrounds and restaurants for the people who are waiting for their gas-free car to be able to run again.
I believe their strategy is like that of Greece. They’ll simply spend themselves into oblivion and then have the rest of the country pick up the tab.
Put this on hotair: The problem isn’t that you can’t get from LA to SF, but it often takes hours to get from, say, Pasadena to LAX. The traffic, the worst in the world, is simply horrific. For a fraction of the amount needed to build this rail eyesore, in LA we could build a couple of additional freeway lines and relieve the congestion! But we don’t build freeways anymore; that not granola -friendly politically correct.
But we’ll build this rail boondoggle that costs 100 times more, and accomplishes little. Indeed, they’ll probably build much of it, run out of money, and abandon it. It will just be ugly rotting twisted piles of metal stretching as far as the eye can see, with no budget for cleanup.
http://highspeedboondoggle.com/
This sounds like our UK HS2 project, a railway we do not need and a £32 billion we can’t afford, but the real story is – it is for the bureaucrats of Brussels and the Nomenklatura to travel to and fro [from Brussels to London/Brum] in relative comfort – the bloody train won’t call at many stops – meaning it is not being built for the hoi polloi.
Funny thing, Ca is like the EU – socialist and whacko – I’m wondering if the San Fran-L.A line…..is it part of a future link up?
😉
don’t u get it…it’s the illegals train – so they can get to the central valley quicker
Not high-speed but it looks like a train.
The German engineering giant Siemens is researching the idea of using overhead electricity lines to power truck traffic.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/siemens-misguided-idea-about-putting-power-lines-on-german-roads-a-842834.html
At least here you can sleep while they are moving your truck.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1055/1471857813_b394bf60c2_o.jpg