Jerry Brown is building the ultimate thrill ride – a $70 billion 200 MPH train to nowhere, which crosses many major fault lines. Imagine the excitement crossing the San Andreas Fault at 200 MPH when they have a repeat of the 7.9 magnitude 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake, which caused 30 feet of horizontal displacement and ruptured the ground for 220 miles.
This was San Francisco after the 1906 low CO2 earthquake.
Southwest Airlines runs 500 MPH flights between LA, Oakland, San Jose, Sacramento and San Francisco about every 10 minutes, so I am sure the 200 MPH train to nowhere running every few hours will prove to be extremely popular.
And of course it is much better for the state to waste $70 billion of taxpayer money, than to let the private sector keep the money and create a million new jobs or so. Think of the children.
The train is merely the effect of the graft.
Got to have the train or this little planned development will be a lemon. With the 200mph train, the real estate development has suddenly rocketed up in value. Coincidence?
Exactly what I was thinking… HOW are Southwest and the other Airlines NOT doing a great job?? Where’s the demand for this 70 billion (just to start) Train??
Total garbage… these a$$holes should be solving the Water Problem instead of building expensive, useless Trains few will use..
Work in San Francisco, commute to/from home in a brand new subdivision in Tulare. Cover arable land with houses, import food from other countries, import more people and expand the tax base, fail to build more water storage to appease environmentalists. What could go wrong in this liberal utopia?
People are married to their cars and will not, under any circumstances, leave them at hoe unless they can rent on at their destination.
Who is going to give up driving to take a train, when one will be stranded when the train gets to where it is going?
I will tell you who, once again…no one!
…leave them at home unless they can rent one at…
These unwashed freaks. Don’t you want to sit next to one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G880gxjj9dI
Need a link: http://www.chainstoreage.com/article/exclusive-look-quay-valley
The more tragic and costly moronrail to nowhere is the climate change gravy train.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority has estimated the project’s year-of-expenditure cost at $68.4 billion (2011 estimate).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_RailWikipedia
SFO to LAX Round-trip = $137
http://www.orbitz.com/flights/from-San_Francisco-to-Los_Angeles.o4468.d4309/
The equivalent of 499,270,073 tickets
More than 6 million people fly between the Los Angeles basin and San Francisco Bay per year
http://cahsr.blogspot.com/2009/10/la-sf-nations-second-busiest-air-route.html
For round trip, cut that figure in half, to 3 million.
So my back of the envelope figures show that for the cost of building the high speed rail, you could fly everyone for free for 166 years.
Of course projects like this can easily double in actual cost.
But who is counting?
Good one Gator……………
+100
Annie Kinsella: If you build what, who will come?
Ray Kinsella: He didn’t say.
Field of Dreams (1989) Quotes
OMG… great analysis.. very creative and TRUE… NO DOUBT a ticket on a Bullet Train would be expensive…
I’m laughing .. yet crying at the same time…
Wow.
Just…wow.
Thanks Gator.
Feel free to share this info, people need to know.
Read this article the other day…pretty good analysis of “the golden state”…
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/19/big-idea-california-is-so-over.html#
and how many desalinization plants could be built instead….?? So once again the leftards attack a non-problem with gobs of taxpayer money while deliberately ignoring the elephant in the room.
Seven, at least.
The $1 billion plant will tap the biggest water tank around, the Pacific Ocean. It will produce 50 million gallons of potable water daily, supplying more than 110,000 customers throughout San Diego County.
Another large plant, with a potential price tag of $400 million, could begin construction in Monterey County by 2018.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Desalination-plants-a-pricey-option-if-drought-5239096.php
“Seventy” at least. (Cooking again)
Can’t imagine any being built because don’t they require cheap, reliable electricity to run them 24/7? That means new CO2 or neutron breathing powers plants and that won’t work in CA.
CO2 doesn’t cause global warming. Forget about CO2 emissions. We need more plant food.
“Can’t imagine any being built…yadda yadda yadda… and that won’t work in CA.”
Our host here has provided graphs showing that there have been worse droughts lasting far longer in that region. Let this one go on as is for a bunch more years, and see what people are saying then.
I suspect there will be lynch mobs looking for anyone saying not to build new dams, and pipelines, and desal plants, and whatever it takes to power them up.
I personally think a network of large pipes from the water rich to the water poor areas is a better idea.
The Columbia river dumps an average of 265,000 cubic feet of water per second into the Pacific ocean.
Before it was dammed, the flow was measured at 1,240,000 cubic feet per second at The Dalles, which is upstream from a few tributaries.
A big project, for sure Gravity could do much, if not all, of the work once built.
IMO, worth it, for the almond trees if nothing else.
Nowhere is a popular place – already has a bridge going there.
There’s a much larger plan in place, Warren. “Politicians love trains. Why? Because they can tell where the tracks go. They know where everybody’s going. For politicians it’s all about control and power.”
http://www.infowars.com/agenda-21-alert-obama-railroads-us-with-the-bullet-train
Read more at:
http://agenda21news.com/2014/08/2582/
I live close to Anaheim and they recently opened up the Arc: http://cdn.anaheimoc.org/cdn/farfuture/lg_4VolaBahUcBS_F1o57AfJF3QbGRjnvb4tnbvurdU/mtime:1410220291/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/blog_post/162833/images/ARTIC%20rendering-interior%20main%20shot%20LR.jpg?itok=JItogmaz
Quite possibly the biggest waste of money I’ve ever seen.
What does it do?
Trains are the most efficient way to get larger travel groups to their destinations.
http://www.documentingreality.com/forum/attachments/f240/42039d1238545895-wwii-holocaust-dachau-death-train-medical-corpsmen-seventh-us-army-view-bodies-one-open-railcars-dacha.jpg
http://cdn3.warhistoryonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/dachau1.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9EgOtbsKCI
theres a reason railroads dumped passenger service as soon as congress allowed them to (and thats a whole other issue, congress allowing them to stop providing a failing service…) and thats because as soon as the mail contracts ended the passenger lines lost too much money.
they were always a loss leader (as any honest railfan will admit) but the federal contracts allowed them to float and freight service (which the passenger service advertised) paid for the capital plant.
in rail freight has always paid the bills and is, really, the only mass transit entity that sustains itself.
freight allows the class 1 RR to pump billions of dollars into infrastructure maintenance and upgrades.
congress pushing for PTC and wanting to fine RR that don’t meet the deadlines but for every mile of track in order to implement PTC the companies have to get permits from fed eps, state epa, fed BLM, Ary Corps of Engineers, and even bureau of indian affairs to make sure someones sacred land isn’t affected. this last one is really killing the railroads s the tribes themselves fight over who has final say. each of these entities takes years to ok sections so rr cannot legally put in towers/ptc equipment yet will be held liable if they don’t.
sounds like fun huh?
fed eps should be fed epa
sorry, note to others do not stitch you own torn tendons.it will bite you in the butt LOL
Water transportation provides tremendous carrying capacity while consuming far less energy compared to other modes of transport such as truck, rail or air. Shippers select barge transportation because these energy efficiencies lead to substantial cost savings. One gallon of fuel can move one ton of cargo 514 miles by barge compared to 202 miles by train and only 59 miles by truck.
http://kentuckyriverports.com/_images/water_transport_comparison.gif
http://kentuckyriverports.com/water_transport_benefits/
yes but there is a huge problem, let me know when you can build a river as needed.
and river transport is heavily subsidized. would be less subsidized if the water taxes actually stayed for those projects and not given to every other program out there. but like anything with taxes the fees get shunted off to peoples pet projects.
Railroads were granted right of ways that they could never have afforded, and we are not allowed to use them.
Riverways are public access, and benefit everyone.
Trains can’t fly. 😉
the rivers public access is paid by a fairly heavy tax all water transport companies have to pay. this tax/fee was supposed to go towards maintaining the waterways yet it doesn’t so water carriers get screwed and public gets to play in the water due to those fees. actually makes me angry how this happens too as waterways then need influx of fed $$ to make them work. very similar to the gas tax which then goes to a general fund to be used for anything. and roads crumble.
many railroads paid back the $$ for grants and ones like Great Northern did not receive any at all.
freight rail can also (alaska is good example) work in conjunction with water traffic, it does this in many situations. but passenger rail has never been profitable except in a few specific (key seems to be it stays IN state like FEC) instances.
the problem is pass rail is a money pit elected officials can use to fool people and grant largesse.
The airlines are notorious for going to great lengths to protect their market share. What happens when the airlines get into a price war and start offering round trip tickets from LA to San Francisco for $50 or $100 each, when this train costs $250+, has less frequent departure times, and takes longer?
My guess is they try to pass an additional carbon tax penalty for all modes of transportation connecting the same points as the train.
we’re a speeshul kind of 5T00pid here in #Failifornia…
but at least we will have the world’s largest, and most expensive, seismograph
, *IF* they ever complete this edition of the Moonbeam Follies.
“High Speed Fail”
There’s nothing so unimportant that you can’t spend someone else’s money on it.
No self respecting fashionista country can be seen without a high speed rail project these days…
Edmund G Brown must be flipping in his grave.
Come on guys, it is about fairness! You can’t do this on a plane…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JPrDklNukQ
What the governor should do first is have train service from Los Angeles to San Francisco. There is no direct train service from Los Angeles to San Francisco. They put you on a Greyhound bus and that’s how you getting to San Francisco.
Better take more than flowers. I would suggest mace, antibacterial lotion, and alot of money…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ_WG3d3GL8
Good article: California Is So Over.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/19/big-idea-california-is-so-over.html
An excerpt:
But ultimately the responsibility for California’s [water] future lies with our political leadership… Desalinization has been blocked by environmental interests but could tap a virtually unlimited supply of the wet stuff, and lies close to the state’s most densely populated areas. Essentially the state could build enough desalinization facilities, and the energy plants to run them, for less money than Brown wants to spend on his high-speed choo-choo to nowhere.
And there needs to be, at least for the short term, an end to dumping water into San Francisco Bay for the purpose of restoring a long-gone salmon run, or to the Delta, in order to save a bait-fish, the Delta smelt, which may already be close to extinct. This dumping of water has continued even as the state has faced a potentially crippling water shortage; nothing is too good for our fish, or to salve the hyper-heated consciousness of the environmental illuminati.
In contrast, Jerry Brown has waged a kind of Oedipal struggle against his father’s legacy. Like many Californians, he recoiled against the sometimes haphazard form of development that plowed through much of the state. Cutting off water is arguably the most effective way to stop all development.
But it’s not just water that exemplifies the current “era of limits” psychology. Energy development has always been in green crosshairs…
Ultimately this is a [sad] story of a state that has gotten tired, having lost its “animal spirits” for the policy equivalent of a vegan diet. Increasingly it’s all about how the elites in the state — who cluster along the expensive coastal areas — feel about themselves. Even Brown knows that his environmental agenda will do little, or nothing, to combat climate change, given the already minimal impact of the state on carbon emissions compared to escalating fossil fuel use in China, India and elsewhere. But the cosmopolitan former Jesuit [Brown] gives more priority to his spiritual service to Gaia than the needs of his non-affluent constituents.
800,000 acre feet of water flushed into the sea, in the midst of crippling drought, to save 305 baitfish…3 buckets full…of minnows.
Insanity and stupidity like that has a way of being bred out of the gene pool.
BTW, rather than being close to extinct, it turns out there are other populations of these little guys that are not affected by the conditions this was is being wasted for.
Oops!
Sorry:… this water is being wasted for.
A bit O/T
From some of the skuttlebut I have read one of the weapons of the Progs is water shortages. They want to use water shortages to ‘train us’ to be obedient to our overlords.
Here we go, first item on my search from the gray lady no less:
Water Pricing, Not Engineering, Will Ease Looming Water Shortages
So the solution is not better planning by the politicians but gouging the citizens and taking more of their wealth. Yes Sir, sounds just like a Prog solution. Why am I not surprised.