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Transportation Bill Sets Aside $45 Million For MagLev Train
tbischel tips us to news that the MagLev train project which would run from Las Vegas to Disneyland has received approval for $45 million in funding. The project has been in the planning stages for quite some time, and it was delayed further by a drafting error in a 2005 highway bill.
"Derided by critics as pie in the sky, the train would use magnetic levitation technology to carry passengers from Disneyland to Las Vegas in well under two hours, traveling at speeds of up to 300 mph. It would be the first MagLev system in the U.S. The money is the largest cash infusion in the project's nearly 20-year history. It will pay for environmental studies for the first leg of the project."
Trains in the US & A? Can this really be true?
Surely this must involve burning of insane amounts of petroleum somehow! Maybe the magnets are powered by petroleum?
Where critics = oil companies and automobile manufacturers
Just callin' it like I see it.
Well, sir, there's nothing on earth
Like a genuine,
Bona fide,
Electrified,
Six-car
Monorail!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marge_vs._the_Monorail
A huge construction project that would take place in during a recession/depression.. is this going to be this generation's Hoover Dam?
Well, apart from the fact a dam is actually useful, and a train between two holiday resorts during a time when people have no money to spend on holidays is all kinds of pointless.
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Start your day shaking hands with Mickey and in under 2 hours you can be getting a blow from Minnie! Woot Woot! Engineering has cum a long way :p
Procrastinators, Unite Tomorrow!!
So a route which was cancelled because of low ridership... is getting the most expensive trainset in the country?
The transrapid project has had a similar length timeframe, and the only feasible implementation (munich to munich airport) was finally shot down a couple of weeks ago. Costs where double of what was originally projected. While maglev is a really cool technology, it is not as brilliant in real life due to the high costs and the competition from airtravel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid
We are all packets in the Internet of life!
With that much funding, we can build a whole two inches of track. Gotta tell you, that'll really help cut down on my commute.
I mean, what else would you use to connect Disneyland to Las Vegas? Flying carpets?
... the cars on the highway it runs next to seemed to move backwards when it hit peak speed of 437 km/h. However, that was only a twenty minute ride, somewhat like a rollercoaster ... a two hour ride would wear the novelty pretty quick.
On a side note, the MagLev in Shanghai was good fun
---
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Did I read that right? Forty-five million dollars to carry out the STUDY for the first leg of the project? If this train were to be built by a business, rather than a government, $45M would get the whole darn thing built and operational!
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
And how long did the previous train take. If it took 8 hours, then maybe it's the reason it didn't succeed. That being said, if you're going to build a maglev train, you might as well build it between two major cities, like New York to Washington.
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I think the key would be the ability to bring your own car along. We are americans after all. Something akin to a ferry boat just might work.
They shouldn't waste the money to even begin looking at such an idea. Just take a look at the Transrapid project that was recently scrapped in Germany. For roughly 40km of track, linking Munich and the Airport, the final cost projection came out to 3 billion euros ($4.7268 billion)! What a waste.
I think they are more concerned with making it actually profitable.
Invenio via vel creo
From a place where one makes memories with the kids, to a place where one wishes nothing remembered.
Invenio via vel creo
There really is nothing between these two cities. So it would probably be about 4 hours. With a Maglev I could see like an hour maybe a little less. It really doesn't make much sense.
I think they'd be better off doing LA to San Jose AMtrack station where riders would have the option of getting on another train for SF.
THIS IS THE FIRST MAGLEV TRAIN FOR GAWDSSAKE!!
(they were actually invented in Britain by Eric Laithwaite, at Imperial College, in the 1960's, but we won't mention that....)
California High-Speed Rail
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/
About time the United States became like the other industrialized countries, don't you think?
In the days of Penny Gas and a less popular Vegas. Way more families now travel out to Vegas and with gas topping 4$ / gal and Airport Security being nothing fun... yeah it is time.
$45 million will buy you 2 kilometers of track. I think I know why this trip takes 'well under two hours'.
hmm.. looks like the 3rd world is only taking a page out of america's book when it comes to a "project" like this.
ps. go ahead flame/troll me .. i am already so blacklisted i dont believe this post will even show up
_ In Egypt Networks: Network Solutions with a Twist
This project will come out to be like 300 billion dollars in today's money. I'm pretty sure the sand isn't good for the maglev mechanisms either, so it would need high ridership just to cover the maintenence costs. On the other hand, this is probably the only area that this project would be possible. The Boston-Washington metropolitan axis is too densely populated to support maglev construction. Just buying the land here to build it would cost in the tens of billions, and I'm sure most towns wouldn't want it passing through, and wouldn't zone it.
45 Million is a joke - we spend 341.4 million per day in Iraq. I'm all for public transport and maybe this is a good start, but I'm skeptical if it will amount to much.
This sounds great!
/sarcasm
Anyone that has ever driven the stretch of dessert between LA and Las Vegas probably recognizes that the sheer complexity of the landscape necessitates environmental studies, starting with just the first leg. Because it's like, FUCKING DESSERT.
I mean, like, personally, if I had $45M, I would definitely invest it in the environmental studies for the first leg of a project like this because who the hell knows if a train is going to be more environmentally friendly than "the millions of Southern Californians who make the 250-plus-mile drive to Las Vegas each year" by car.
Because when I try to do the math in my head, I can't figure it out. Definitely want to stick 200 environmental experts on that problem for a year, at a salary of $225K/year each.
No need to worry about the trivialities though, like why a previous train attempt was canceled "because of low ridership".
Seriously, there's got to be an error in that press-release, right? Or can anyone just get $45M for scratching their left nut?
It's depressing; I wish they would just start building one of these trains already.
The French LGV Est is 300 km and cost 4 billion euros - $6 billion. $21 million a mile.
Or if you look at the British London-to-channel-tunnel rail link, it cost £5.2 billion ($10 billion) for 108 km - $100 million a mile.
Even if economies of scale get the price down to $10 million per km the cost will be $4 billion.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
It is not a train.
Its a ride.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I hope you enjoy your Friedmaniacal society. From Las Vegas to Disneyland??
Why not some really useful commuting route?
Or something like that.
My second thought was "where will they get that much copper?"
Powering 500 miles of track will need an awful lot of wire.
No sig today...
There is already a "high speed" train that runs between New York and Washington D.C. - the Acela Express, for a commute time of 2 hours 48 min. It is limited to a paltry 75-150 MPH (120-240 KPH) due to track conditions. Mostly the speed is limited via the existing infrastructure, the bridges, tunnels, track closeness etc. Higher speeds would necessitate reinforcement of those structures, and the overhead electrical wires to withstand higher speeds. Much of the speed inhibition is in that the train needs to tilt to navigate the sharp rail curves. Pre-existing tracks are to close together to allow for high speed cornering that would require the trains to tilt, thus preventing train collisions between regular trains, and the leaning Acela Express. Of note, there are multiple at-grade crossings on this trains route - these are rarely found on other high speed train lines for obvious reasons.
..........FULL STOP.
Might have been successful if Amtrak were a competent rail operator, with good track and rolling stock... Amtrak has to be some kind of conspiracy to make rail travel look bad to 'merikins.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_levitation_train:
The Shanghai maglev cost 9.93 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion) to build.... China aims to limit the cost of future construction extending the maglev line to approximately 200 million yuan (US$24.6 million) per kilometer.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
This is USA, home of AMTRAK. Profitable would be cause for concern. It absolutely must not provide a viable alternative to the current system. BART only runs because it is expensive and impractical. Think of the Oil Companies!
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
It would seem that Los Angeles to Las Vegas would be more population centered, thus insuring better profitability.
As far as mag-lev - why? Building a proven TGV type of track, would allow other trains to use it as well, also aiding in cost-benefit. Plan on multiple side junctions to allow the TGV type train to pass the slower trains, thus permitting dual use for freight, etc. I can't imagine the mag-lev train to be that much more efficient, since fuel cost , at those speeds, is all about fighting wind resistance, and not rolling resistance.
..........FULL STOP.
They would make a huge profit from a DC to NY train assuming it had stops in the big East Coast Cities. I grew up in Baltimore and it seems that almost everybody their worked in DC and had to drive all the way everyday. A lot of people would use it for business commutes and many college kids could use it to get home from school (UMD, GW etc) without car.
Even Amtrak has track maintenance issues, and how are we to expect anybody to be able to maintain a MagLev system in the US of A? If they've given up in Japan (where they are amazing with their trains), here this is like funding a ladder to the moon. Seriously.
Really, the service between New York and D.C. is amongst Amtrack's most important routes. The only thing that service between two tourist traps would accomplish is public interest, and as a first generation demonstrator.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
Maybe if these things do start being built, the Michigan UP Copper industry will experience a small revival. There is still tons of copper up there, the cost of extracting it just became too high eventually. A large spike in demand could make it cost-effective again
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
If there's one thing worth learning from trains in Europe it's that high speed train routes are mainly competitive if they're short enough that their lower speed (compared to planes) doesn't cancel out the advantage of shorter travel to/from the city centres and reduced security/checkin times.
London to Paris for example is very competitive in time:
The stations on either end are in the city centres, and you only need to show up 30 minutes before the train leaves, meaning that from leaving home in London I can be in the centre of Paris in less than 4 hours.
Compare to a plane from London Heathrow, where I'd have to leave home about 3 hours before the plane leaves due to checkin time and travel, and it'd take me a further hour or so from disembarking at Paris CDG to stepping off a train in the city centre. So I'm above 4 hours before even counting the flight.
But if I were to go to, say Nice (south coast of France, it's not nearly as attractive anymore, as the flight is only about 20-30 minutes longer, but it adds hours (and a change) to the train ride.
Note that the high cost of the French and British projects is due to traversing rich farming land and densely populated eras, that required lots of bridges and tunnels to cross all the existing roads, plus expensive negociations with existing land owners (because a fast track needs to be straight so you're pretty committed to paid the price to cross whatever is on this line)
I really don't think the desert around LV has the same constrains.
Of course, by choosing maglev instead of conventional track it's very possible they'll manage a higher per-mile cost in the desert than the European paid to cross posh Riviera lands.
I guess this means the 2 other pilot projects - which probably would see some ridership - Pittsburgh or Baltimore... have been shelved forever.
its not like Barbara Boxer doesn't have a lot of influence either.
C'mon, all that changed in 2006 is that the side in power butters their bread on the bottom instead of the top
Sometimes when I think of Democrats and Republicans all I can see is that horrible Star Trek episode Let that be your last battlefield... meaning who can tell the difference?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
What a world we might make then.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
Something like this? I think something similar still operates in France and maybe Switzerland - I've seen trains full of HGV's there.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I have this ocean front property near Las Vegas that would be _perfect_ for them.
It's definately not going to be a waste of money if we build it. Most people would gladly spend their gas money on the train and the company that builds the train would make billions.
The problem is, governments can't build anything cheaply. Something which should only cost a few billion to build will probably cost 100 billion, just like the big dig, due to corruption in the system.
One way to make construction cheap is to use illegal immigrant labor, while it's not popular on the east coast, on the west coast where they are planning this, if they use illegal immigrant labor, they could probably build this at a oost of a few billion dollars.
I say we should do it. We spend more money on the Iraq war than we spend on fixing our economy here at home, and better transportation always improves the economy.
I remember it as an unending procession of nothing, particularly Barstow. ~
Invenio via vel creo
Airport Security won't be much worse after some haraam stunt by al-Quaeda or the Terry Nichols crew.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Oil companies? Auto industry! That's the sunny underbelly of the American auto industry going belly up. Maybe they'll lose the stranglehold on congress that's prevented infrastructure maintenance and modernization of our rail system.
I am not against transportation. I am against throwing money into a lake. If you want to build a train, then do it practically. MegLev is not practical.
Remember, this is to connect Disneyland and Vegas. Not even DisneyWORLD, but DisneyLAND. This will do nothing for the economy. This project is wrong in so many ways.
You brought up a great example: The Big Dig. What a financial disaster. And to think there is *still* traffic in Boston. Again, so wrong is so many ways.
I won't even start on Iraq.
It's about 300 miles from LA to San Jose. Sounds short enough to me for US airports.
http://www.autozug.de/ (in Germany, there's also services in Austria, France and other places).
...after having watched part of our antiquated, outmoded, and obviously unused highway system crumble into the Mississippi, I feel that perhaps we should be allocating this money to maintaining the existing infrastructure? Maybe a few of us backward, countryfolk in flyover territory still use these existing carbon-hungry systems? Also, I suffer this delusion that the gas taxes I pay should be channeled not into the general fund, but into transportation projects in my state. If new development is desired, perhaps a few dozen new nuclear plants and an attempt to electrify the vehicle fleet?
The French made their TGV go much faster than 300Mph on normal tracks by basically giving it bigger wheels - 352Mph to be precise.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6521295.stm
Why pay so much for a technology giving you so little? MagLev isn't cheap. You could just copy the French...........ah what am I saying...
throw new NoSignatureException();
Amtrak has an Auto Train from near DC to near Orlando. It is a slow (50mph) overnight train. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_Train/.
I looked into that once. It was much cheaper to drive. Which made me very suspicious about the petro-economics of the whole deal.
The problem is that you have to buy a ticket for you car that's already more expensive than food, fuel, and lodging for the trip. Then you have to also buy a ticket for yourself, which is half again as expensive as the last ticket. Then you still have to take care of your meals.
And it gets much, much worse if you are a group of people.
A family of four would pay almost an order of magnitude less to travel by car.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
You don't need MagLev for fast trains. Anaheim to Las Vegas is just over 260 miles, or around 420 km, which is around 4 hours by car under good conditions. A German ICE running on standard-gauge tracks can hit 300 km/h, levitation not required (although walls to block side winds might be). If you invest in the track, you don't have to resort to magic to get to LV in two hours. 180 MPH is fast enough.
Sort of.
Amtrak has discovered an alternate revenue stream to passengers. One which is much more reliable, and does not depend on customer satisfaction. So it makes sense that they focus most of their energy on that stream rather than their supposed reason for business.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Amtrak does a lot with what they have. Unlike highways they pay taxes on their tracks through fees (roads are tax free and rob the public of the taxes that would have been payed by other uses). They also have their own police force unlike highways. They also have to share the track with freight companies on the west coast at least, making them late.
Of course, cars get all the subsidies so we can go fast in them. To put subsidies in perspective, Amtrak could run for a decade on the money spent on just the "Big Dig" in Boston. All the public money they have ever gotten is about the same as the loans given to the airlines since 9/11. Six days of the Iraq war is about the same as their federal subsidy.
Cars pay their own way though right? Well, they pay that gas tax, which of course doesn't cover the costs of state and local roads. There are registration fees, but those don't usually cover all the costs either. They certainly don't pay for the policing of the roads. Highways are a huge money pit. Nationwide car users underpay by 20-75 cents per dollar, depending on the state. The rest comes from the general fund of the state. So, perhaps what we should do is make drivers pay the full cost of their transportation through direct fees and taxes. Then perhaps we would see the true cost of driving, and perhaps people would drive less. At the very least, people who don't drive much, like myself, would pay fewer taxes.
Amtrak has been crippled on purpose. I think you're right, to make trains look bad to americans. It happened too late, but GM was brought before congress to answer for their part in systematically destroying trolley service in Los Angeles. The auto industry has been waging a war against trains for decades and they are at least a big part of the reason that Amtrak looks incompetent.
There's already been a maglev wreck in Germany that killed several people. I don't believe you can build maglev cars that can protect passengers in a 300 mph wreck. Even jet airliners are limited to 250 knots below 10,000 feet.
We should make the Feds build a "car train" that people drive their cars onto at stations in Boston, NYC, DC, Albany, Buffalo and Champlain (NY, across the border from Montreal). We should put the train in a tube under the water in the Atlantic, Hudson/Champlain, Delaware/Chesapeake and Erie canal, which won't need rights of way or disruptive construction schedules. Linking together the Midatlantic, New England and Canadian transit points that carry so much of America's (and the world's) traffic.
There's a vast swarm of traffic on the highways (I-95, I-87 and I-90) that runs basically between those cities (really including Toronto and Montreal), pumping pollution and chewing up gas all along the way. Make stops at one point between each terminal and it will carry lots of subregional traffic, too. If the train goes 300MPH, the speed up/down between the stops would make NYC/DC a reliabe 90 minute trip, with a station between Philly and Wilmington only 45 minutes away. DC to Toronto only 4 hours, and you can drive off (or drive on) anywhere in the 5 stops between.
Fast, reliable, safe. Because the train's energy can be generated at large power plants near fuel ports and scrubbed centrally, energy efficient and much cleaner. These routes could haul cargo trailers most of the time, when not full of passenger/car trains.
The increased efficiency (in time, energy any pollution) should pay for the construction within a reasonable span of years, probably not much longer than the time to construct (which should happen simultaneously between the cities).
Or, we can leave the Northeast in the 20th Century, while the rest of the world passes us by.
--
make install -not war
Trains in the US & A? Can this really be true?
Actually, the bulk of continental freight shipped in the USA is by rail. Have a look at the rolling stock of the likes of Union Pacific, Norfolk Suffolk or CSX, and you'll see that there's been quite a bit going on.
For example, cars are just getting into gas electric hybrids, but the railroads have been running diesel electric hybrids now for decades. The locomotives are now into a new generation of hybrid technology.
The fuel efficiency of these rail lines is staggering. One or two locomotives pull trains that can be two miles long!
But you are preaching to the choir here. I love trains.
This is my sig.
Why not build more casinos in Palm Springs area for a fraction of the cost of building a MagLev to LV? The MagLev will cost, may be, $100B. You can easily build enough casinos for far less. At $45M per year funding, this will take forever to finish. With current credit rating of CA and bond market conditions, they can't even get it off the ground.
Well, apart from the fact a dam is actually useful, and a train between two holiday resorts during a time when people have no money to spend on holidays is all kinds of pointless.
Ok, the fundamental problem of the USA right now is that our infrastructure is old and inefficient and its killing us, ultimately driving this recession. So, during the resultant recession, the government grabs a bunch of people and goes and fixes things.
It's a public works project, so, you'll keep engineers working to build it, construction people working on it. I mean, I'm not a big fan of government spending and taxes that go with it, but there are times when the feds have to step in and clean house and this is one. So, yeah, the Feds should be supporting this and other rail lines, improving the roads (improve fuel efficiency), upgrading power stations, (like change out fuel oil burning plants and then coal plants for nukes), and should be researching some sort of way to get all the methane hydrate off the coast back into the USA to ease a natural gas shortage.
This is my sig.
I would tear down all the caternary wires and develop lithium ion trains, and have them take a charge at central points. All those wires depress real estate prices and would, for example, make property on the delaware and christina rivers more desirable for development.
People don't need cars in cities. Instead, what you do is put shopping centers on the fricking rail lines so that people can get off, shop, and then get back on the train. The Northeast is not just a transportation problem, but an urban planning one as well.
All of the track needs to be upgraded. There's a lot of wood rail track that's spiked still, dated from nearly a century ago. This needs to be ripped up and replaced with concrete tied continuously welded track to allow for high speed rail service. You also need to have more sidings so that trains can pull off for loading and unloading without clogging the rail lines, and you need to have more loops for turning them around.
But yeah, the northeast needs a massive rail upgrade, and it wouldn't be all -that- expensive to do. I can't see it being more than 100 billion dollars!
This is my sig.
"The problem is, governments can't build anything cheaply. Something which should only cost a few billion to build will probably cost 100 billion, just like the big dig, due to corruption in the system."
Yeah, if there was only a way to build rail systems using non-governmental organizations. You know, like all of Japan's rail systems are privately built and owned. Hm. HHHMMMMMMMMmmmmmmm.
It's sad when people can't even conceive of solving a big problem without using the government. Or maybe Socialists and Communists are normally drawn to topics like this.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Just build the damn thing. Throw in one from SF to LA, DC to New York, and Chicago to the dozen or so cities that are within 600 miles. By the time they're finished, our children will finally be able to utilize the kind of transportation infrastructure Japan and France have had since the 1980s.
Ugh, what a waste.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Why are they not paying for it? More importantly, why am I?
and they run starting around 5:30 AM or so. That's what I used when I lived in BAltimore, and worked in DC
..........FULL STOP.
$45 million isn't that much for a project like this, but it's about time!
the French national railway (SNCF) has proven time and time again that electric trains can easily achieve 300mph (a TGV hit 357mph on test in 2007)
That's just 3mph slower than the fastest ever Maglev Monorail.. but it runs on standard gauge rail track that can be time-shared with commuter trains and railfreight traffic.. Heavy Rail in the USA is something that had its time then went away, but don't be surprised if it makes a return again.
300mph trains between city-centre stations can compete with 600mph aeroplanes flying from heavily-secured out-of-town airports.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
A large spike in demand could make it cost-effective again
You obviously haven't been watching the news lately. There is already a spike in demand that is causing copper to be very expensive. For example, I bought copper pipe for my house ~5 years ago for a little over $3 for a 10' section. Current price is $15. And recyclers are paying so well that people are risking electrocution to steal copper wires.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
a train between two holiday resorts during a time when people have no money to spend on holidays is all kinds of pointless.
Don't worry, with the low US dollar and the overall downturn in your economy forcing resorts to offer deals, Vegas is doing just fine. I was there not 2 months ago and it was packed wall-to-wall with Canadian and European (a LOT of British for some reason) tourists.
Besides the fact that this train will not be built before the current economic troubles are over. By the time the train is actually built, the US economy will be firing on all cylinders again - unless you subscribe to the theory that this is a permanent depression.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
It looks like LeRouche's supporters shall have to invent a new public works project to be the capstone of their New New Deal.
The problem is the location. It feels like a subsidy for specific private enterprises rather than a general infrastructure project. Disney land to Las Vegas? is this the best way to spend borrowed money to increase economic output? I suppose if there was a severe congestion and parking problem that such a train would be useful. But as it is I think that this smells like the kind of pork the president says he wouldn't sign. You know, useless stuff like education for returning soldiers.
There is also a question of whether this is the best place to build a train. Many years ago a study was completed that found based on land ownership, ridership, and need the best location for a train would be between houston and dallas. But obviously sex and drugs are more important than real business.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
4 billion, 8 or even 12 billion.... how much do we spend on alternates?
250 miles with typical fuel economy of say 20MPG (lots of stop and go)... 12.5 Gal of gas * 4 = $41 * 2 = $100 in gas per trip (being generous) and just for sake of argument we'll use 10 million visitors per year from LA (39 million tourists in Vegas each year total). That's $1,000,000,000.00 in gas alone. If the visitor took a plane the cost only goes up.
SO with a 12 Billion dollar price tag... we'd break even on costs after 12 years.
So what if a ticket was $100... round trip of course, and you didn't have to drive and there were packaged deals with hotels...
I think a lot of people would take the rail option (maglev/light/whatever).
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
This seems to be a train of most use to a tourist, not Southern California or LV Locals (although I am sure they will be riding as well). The Disneyland Resort area (with Disneyland, California Adventure, Knotts Berry Farm, Anaheim Stadium, The Pond, etc in the near vicinity) would pick up Las Vegas guests from around the world for day trips. And Vegas would benefit just as much with a two-fer type vacation package where you can get a cheap hotel in one city, but get the benefit of the shows, sports, attractions of both cities. I am sure this is seen as a boon to the tourist trade and entertainment industries more than to the locals.
:)
This can be a (partially or fully) privately funded project if the two major benefactors (Orange County attractions and Las Vegas casinos) pitch in a fraction of their profits. Vegas is already sponsoring free bus trips to casinos from the greater LA area - if you get 20-30 people together, they will send the bus to get you and pay the organizer a royalty (or so I have heard from a number of people). It's not a bad day trip - except for that 4 hour bus ride each way that cuts into your day.
Someone suggested building more local casinos in California - but I don't see that as a viable solution since indian casinos (gambling is illegal in CA) are limited in the numbers of machines they can have (we just voted to increase that number, but not eliminate it), and is typically limited to only one casino per property with 1-2 hours of drive time to get to the next casino. In Vegas if you are feeling unlucky, you can stagger next door to the next place. To draw an analogy, this is like comparing a 7-11 to a WalMart.
I think the technology of the MagLev and the speed is needed not only for practicality, but for the wow factor that will attract the tourists looking for something different. I've seen the beach - now lets go visit Paris, Italy, New York, Pirates, castles, buffets, shows, and more for the cost of a train ride - a 300MPH train (or however fast it will go). I can see the marketing flyers now - "Fly to Las Vegas at 300 MPH, 2 inches above the ground!"
With Vegas and Disney involved you would think finding would be the EASY part. I bet that initial $45 million is just seed money for the poker tables, roulette wheels, keno, etc. One god weekend and we can have this thing funded...
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Let me see if I can convert that to units I can understand [...] how about 0.02 Wars on Terror
In discussions about US government programs I often hear Iraq war comparisons. It's understandable - there are a lot of exciting things we could have done with the $500 billion we've spent in Iraq.
However, we've spent that money; we can't un-spend it. So we don't have $500 billion sitting around waiting for an application. What we have is a toilet that's had $500 billion flushed down it, a budget deficit and $9,410 billion in national debt.
Maybe we never want to pay off that debt; that certainly seems to be the view of our politicians. But if we want to get the national debt under control we have to realise that, to paraphrase Everett Dirksen, ten billion here and ten billion there and pretty soon you're talking about serious money.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
...it's #1 a monorail. #2, it doesn't HAVE TO RUN at ground level.
You don't HAVE TO lay a set of steel rails at ground level, nor do you have to deal with right of way/eminent domain, etc, not when you have a nice long straight highway with a median strip or alongside the highway stretching across the desert all the way to Las Vegas.
The most difficult construction aspect is in Anaheim and Vegas. Right of way will be difficult, but not impossible.
The Rocky Mountains will prove problematical. Throw enough engineers and money and that problem is solved.
Practically every "It Can't Be Done!" engineering problem, WAS done.
You just have to decide to do it.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
Coming from Michigan's Department of Transportation :
"A mile of freeway through an urban area costs approximately $39 million, while a mile of freeway through a rural area costs approximately $8 million."
Highways are expensive.
There is a train going from DC to Baltimore. The MARC plus one or two bus's will do the trip.
Or we could just make the California Lottery terminals in every 7-11 and liquor store self service and eliminate the need to go to Vegas.
Or revive the existing train, with an extraterritoriality agreement to allow gambling on the train under Nevada law as soon as it leaves the LA station.
You think this is silly? Look at the history of modern "riverboat gambling" on the Mississippi. Originally, the riverboats had to actually go out on the river and cruise around. Then they did "pseudo-cruises", where the boat stayed at the dock but they loaded and unloaded people as if they were going somewhere. The next step was casinos on barges that never went anywhere. Then the casino barges were moved a short distance inland to ponds with river water circulated through the ponds. Currently, land based "riverboat gambling" is allowed in some states if they're close enough to water.
(Some of this came from safety problems. Big passenger boats full of thousands of drunks on a busy industrial river weren't a good idea. Tying them up alongside a dock led to problems. Building inspectors didn't regulate them because they were boats, and the Coast Guard didn't regulate them because they weren't mobile watercraft. They didn't have lifeboats or a full set of life preservers, or functional engines. There were three major accidents with docked gambling ships. In the worst one, in 1998, a loose barge from a barge tow hit the lines tying up a gambling ship, "The Admiral", near St. Louis, and it floated out into the river, tied up by only one line and with no way for the gamblers to get off. A frantic deployment of every tugboat in the area was able to force the ship back to the dock before it broke loose completely.)
A maglev train at 300mph isn't free to operate. It uses a lot of power, maintenance, etc. And I can guarantee that all the LA people won't choose to use the train instead. A good number of LAers shun public transit.
...don't forget all the ancillary companies that the auto industry lobby is dependent on - highway construction, real estate, retail development, etc., and that have effective "ins" to US legislative bodies.
Obviously, most people haven't played "Railroad Tycoon". Freight might be boring, slow and ugly, but it is ultimately more profitable over the long term than passenger service.
In reality, UP and BNSF are at or very near capacity running coal trains from Utah & Wyoming back east to coal-powered power plants, and their trans-continental lines transhipping cargo containers are near capacity, too. Drive along I-80 (UP freight line) or US 20/26 (BNSF coal lines) in Wyoming if you don't believe this...
Of course there will be boondoggle environmental projects, just as there are boondoggle no-bid contracts for non-environmental things. I get it that conservatives don't self-identify as environmentalists, but why do they resist funding for infrastructure in the USA so much more fiercely than they would 10 times more money for a bigger military base in Iraq? Do you really have to be an anti-environmentalist? Is there a point that I'm missing? And even if we don't turn a profit, why is it socialism to build infrastructure in the USA but they think it's "our responsibility" to build it in Iraq or Afghanistan? The cynic in me think that it's okey-dokey over there because the (ahem) right people are getting those contracts (i.e. friends of the right people), but an explanation that cynical can't (I hope) be the whole story.
In other words, a series hybrid.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
The Rocky Mountains? That would be a problem. It would take a monumental effort to move them between LA and LV then carve a path through them.
qz
$45 million would just pay for the first mile of track and the train. That isnt including the land required for the track
I've been in Buena Park and there arent any places I can see where they could run the track from disney land, everything is already built up, unless they plan on buying tracts of land.
Then you have to figure in where the route will follow. I imagine the 91 to the 15 might work, if they put it along the center of the freeways, but that would call for major reconstruction on the freeways, not to mention the 15 cuts across one of the largest fault systems in the world, and it goes up a 4 mile uphill grade with a 4000 foot change in elevation. That grade has some of the most horrible winds during the windy season, and is prone to wildfires, from that point on, it's clear sailing to las vegas. a Vegas to Barstow link would be more sensible, or Vegas to Victorville, at least in the meantime, it would be a better stretch to try something this experimental out on. Most of the land between those points is government land.
Oh and even for that relatively trouble free stretch, it would still cost much more than $45 million.
This sounds like a feel good clause to keep the hippies happy while they take $45 million out to be misappropriated.
That sounds like a lot of money, until you get to compare it with the costs to pave a road. A new road can easily cost $20-30 million dollars/ mile. Now this does not include the drastic increases in the costs of oil, which is used to make asphalt. The costs for paving a road are about twice what they were just a year ago.
A train track is not cheap, but roads are not getting cheaper and fewer people will be driving long distances as the price of oil continues to go up.
I've taken the auto train. It's expensive. Almost all minivans are "oversize vehicles," which cost more. The car carriers are built on a 1970s transportation model where most cars were mid-sized sedans. Amtrak hasn't upgraded it's rolling stock to account for the popularity of the minivans.
... Standard coach fare is $450 plus $514 for the minivan. That's three coach seats - the infant is supposed to be lap-carried. Fat chance of that. Upgrading to the fourth seat for the small monkey brings the fare up to $540+$514 = $1054. Upgrading to the small family bedroom increases the round-trup fare to $2083 total. Tough to justify the Auto Train.
We got a 2-bunk cabin, which is much nicer than trying to sleep in the standard coach seats. Overall costs were about $1600 (in 2003,) not including the additional drive from Sanford FL to Sarasota FL. The main benefit of the auto train is being able to do something else - get up, walk around, sit in the lounge car, have a meal, etc.
However, the economics make this a very expensive trip. Travel time is comparable to driving. In today's costs: our Toyota minivan gets 24 MPG. Round trip is about 1200 miles, using 50 gallons of gasoline. At $4 per gallon, fuel costs are $200. The kids won't sit still for 16-hours of driving, so we split the drive into two days. Hotel costs us $150 or so. If we ate at restaurants for three meals each day, add another $200 in food. So driving costs me about $550, or about 1/3 that of taking the Auto Train. It's less expensive to purchase coach seating on the Auto Train, but that's not really an option if you have small kids.
As a straw-man, I'll check prices for a flight+car from DC to Orlando. AirTran will get me four round-trip flights (2x adult, 2x kids) hopping through Atlanta for $900. Total flight time is about 4 hours. I can rent a mid-sized sedan from multiple vendors for under $300/week.
Hopping over to Amtrak's website
Look at what our government is doing...
http://www.transport21.ie/
34 billion euro to fix up our transport network. Of course this is allready over priced and late.
It cost them 500million or so to build a tunnel under dublin, and it closes frequently because the computers crash..
Can ye come over here and help us out? I seriously think that kid on the homepage is building the network.
Focusing on pie-in-the-sky maglev projects is asinine when there isn't even respectable passenger service on steel wheels.
...before we throw money away on maglev projects. Here's a video with some additional information:
California needs to lead the way by building something like this:
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/gallery.aspx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD1QGNsRg74
If I remember correctly the first leg is Las Vegas to Jean, NV. McCarren airport is bursting at the seams with traffic now and cannot expand any further. So a new international or domestic terminal is going to be built in Jean which is about 15 minutes south of Las Vegas.
Are the businesses that will profit from this in "Vegas and Disneyland" required to pony up some cash to at least match this amount? They stand to profit quite a bit from this government funding so they ought to be paying quite a bit for it too.
Now if there were stops between Vegas and Disneyland that went someplace besides pleasure domes then it might be worth the government's money. However, this can't be enough to actually start construction on anything -- it's probably just "study" money. This given that it costs $100k to install new traffic lights and an intersection and it costs $3-5 million to install 5 miles of merely-standard track.
There was a similar study (I don't know about cost of the study) on installing a high speed train between San Francisco and Los Angeles running through California's Central Valley. It also stopped along the way. Granted it doesn't cross state lines, but there's a great idea for public transportation.
This isn't -- it's an idea for commercial transportation that benefits the fat cats running Vegas and Disneyland.
Plus the California study has already been paid for. Rather than yet another study, save the $45x10^6 to start building the California proposal I say.
We need a better train system here. I'm still surprised that there isn't some sort of express train running along each coast.
It's ridiculous that I can't get a reasonably priced train ticket from LA to Tucson (a rail hub in southern AZ).
$45 million? To keep this amount in perspective a standard NYC subway car costs over $1 million.
What's really sad is that so few corporations are willing to take a chance on something like this. The up front investment is ENORMOUS with no guarantee of a profit return. This isn't Japan, where the rail is essentially the only way to get around. It costs much more to build a rail from city to city here than it does in Japan; it's a simple matter of scale. It's the same reason that people like to give a pass to the telecomm companies; the USA has a lot more land area, so it's too darned difficult to upgrade broadband speeds! Yeah...
If the government doesn't do it, who will? The government has solved many big problems in the past (we went to the god damn moon, didn't we?)
As someone who grew up in Las Vegas, I can say that I'm probably in the "pie in the sky" camp. I heard all these cool stories back in the 80s about a super train to LA.
It would be nice, and Las Vegas has grown a lot since then, but I'm not even sure how far $45 million dollars would go for a maglev train that has to go that distance. It might pay for one of the stations or something.
By comparison with roads; they are expanding the Katy Freeway (I-10) here in Houston to ten lanes either way - at a cost of $1 billion/mile. (22 miles, $22 billion) It will still probably end up being congested, whereas a train likely will not suffer the same kind of gridlock/congestion.
.. provided you're an engineer - "enough" then proved to be "one". :-)
Insert
the 45 million is FOR AN ENVIROMENTAL IMPACT STUDY
read the summary again.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Screw the MagLev, make the California High Speed Rail System a reality: http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/ It's cheaper and can work with existing infrastructure. Plus, there's even an effort to get private investors to build a high speed rail line from Las Vegas to Victorville: http://www.desertxpress.com/
Many posters are under the impression that this money will go towards actually building the train. It's not. This money is for environmental studies only.
However, this is still good news. This project has been in the works for 20 years, and it looks like it may finally be getting started.
Don't forget the decent public transport in both the UK and France. I can get from Paris to 200m from my front door without leaving a train station, and with only two changes, and it takes under 5 hours. When transport to and from airports is uncluded, this is slightly quicker and much more comfortable.
I just had to reread that. 20 lanes must be huge. Some of the motorways here in the UK just got upgraded to 4 lanes each way, and they normally cope fine(ish), even in rush hour. How many people use the I-10?
I mean, seriously, if they got wiped out by a pair a meteorites don't you think we'd all be better off for it ?
We should be trying to disconnect these places from the rest of America, not connect them better.
Actually, if you look at that area, the environment is extremely fragile. The Desert does not recover well from physical damage. The few feeble/faux efforts to mitigate the impact will really push the costs up. The main point is to divert the money to contractors, so the more it costs, the better. Of course, this is at the expense of whoever lives there now.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
The oil companies are doing better than J.D. Rockefeller's wildest dreams, and we damn sure won't get a working public transit system until the Auto Industry DOES go belly up. At that time, private cars should be outlawed for most of us, in order to make sure that we pay for the system when we DO install it.
It's like the Cold War. We spent many billions of dollars on unusable weapons systems,to keep the bucks flowing between wars, now, when we've managed to get someone to actually attack us, we get to borrow our grand-children's savings so we can buy some real weapons that someone has to go use on someone else. Have you ever noticed how we have to issue bonds whenever our Fearless Leaders find some project actually needed by the public? Just another finger in the pie. Why can't we pay cash, just once?
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I never watched X-Files, but I have paid some attention to the News.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Your post is sadly accurate. This "venture" does nothing except line more pockets already stuffed with cash.
I would think a better allocation of the money and plans would be building a MagLev from certain rural and suburban communities to the not-close-enough-to-drive-to cities to bolster employment, housing and more. As a for instance, in New York, people and politicians (yes I consider them a separate group) often complain about the decline of Upstate New York. Upstate New York has numerous river towns, all arranged in a nice straight line, all with rail beds or rail in place (yes, I know you cant use existing rail for a MagLev - but you can use existing (defunct or not) areas where that rail did or does exist to put a MagLev in, saving LOTS of money in not needing to grade terrain, remove mountains or hills in the way, etc). So... hundreds of small towns, suburbs and rural areas could be connected to areas like Albany, Troy, Plattsburgh, etc... with travel time from the most remote being in the matter of minutes instead of hours by car or regular rail.
What a neat way of building up the area... really short commute to work/the "big" cities, really cheap and affordable housing, lots of land to build more on... which, in the not-too-long run would be what happens as each area becomes more and more self sustaining, both through an influx of new people looking for affordable housing close (time wise at least) to available jobs - and through having financial ties back and forth between the cities and the growing rural and suburban areas (a financial benefit to all involved - and also an incentive for more businesses to move into the cheaper upstate area to help continue that growth).
Nah... that would help too many people - both those who live up there, and those who live in less affordable areas who would consider moving there to have a decent lifestyle, home and job.
Much better to line the pockets of the already insanely rich.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
"now, when we've managed to get someone to actually attack us"
I guess I shouldn't try relating that attack to the war we're in, until we attack Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia, where our attackers are, or were.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Los Angeles and Las Vegas are pretty-damn-big cities. What's more, the traffic traveling between the two on a regular basis is enormous, and the length of the route in addition to the congestion means getting people out of their cars could be a HUGE win.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
That's what happens when you build your house inside a train station...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
219,000 cars/day supposedly. The road even has its own website, since the project is so big. http://www.katyfreeway.org./ Thats not even half of a parallel road nearby, Westheimer Road, which takes I believe 500,000 cars/day. However, the traffic on Katy Freeway is almost all work-commuters, people who work in the big buildings downtown, and they *must* get to work on time, so that particular section of highway gets a lot of attention. Katy is a "bedroom community" for all the downtown workers. At some stretches of the freeway, you can see over the bollards to the parts that are under construction; and you can see 10 lanes already built - it really isn't as big as it sounds - it would take maybe 15 seconds to walk across all ten lanes.
If you pretend the train is a plane (with suitable branding and on-board service), maybe they'd switch. Planes are public transit, but people don't seem to have a problem with them.
Its why the rest of the world doesnt rise up and take over the USA.
---
One of the big stumbling blocks in making profitable passenger rail is the low max speed forced on the trains by having to share the rails with the (profitable) coal/freight trains. France has proven that to don't need MagLev to go 200+ mph in a passenger train, but you do need dedicated rails. NYC to Philly in 20 min. instead of two hours, or NYC to DC in one hour instead of four, would be entirely possible in a TGV style train. No need for new technology, just build the tracks and buy the trains. Penn Station to Union Station in one hour, would have no trouble filling seats. But it will never work as long as Amtrak has to share the track with coal trains going from PA coal mines to the Norfolk Navy bases.
We are all just people.
Nowhere in the US Constitution does the federal government have authorization to build or fund train lines.
Libertas in infinitum
Ticket price $1000 But the seats recline and you get a free glass of Napa Valley's finest!
What about trying to model these new MagLev trains on the Japan model? They have to deal with mountains and Earthquakes and they are (from what I heard) DAMM efficient and DAMM fast, even in heavily congested areas like the greater Tokyo area, Kyoto, and the northern mountainous regions like Sapphario (sp?). I know the infrastructure was designed with trains in mind, but if they can tear down a moutain to make room for an interstate, they can shuffle things around for a train. Interestingly enough, they're getting close to completion on a Light-Rail system here in Phoenix: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/METRO_Light_Rail_(Phoenix) Not anywhere on the same scale as the proposed Vegas - LA route, but its something.
So. Even when it's built, it'll still just be fantasy.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
First, we'd have to nationalize our public transportation system.*ROTFLMAO* I've ridden AMTRAK, freight has higher priority
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I doubt connecting an entertainment park using an maglev will pay off. In Germany the "Transrapid" had been in planning for decades, but finally only one track was built in China. The problem was that a similar "high visibility" project in Germany was discussed, namely connecting an not-so important (on european scale) Airport (Munich) with Munich Main Station. Finally nobody wanted to carry the costs, especilly not the industry for which this would have been an very expensive advertisement. In Europe there are at least two high-speed trains which are extremly sucessfull: ICE and TGV. The secret of both is that they carried commuters from the first day they where build. It is not completly uncommon to commute over 100km by train in the morning. So the ideal place for a maglev is when two megacities have a distance of 80km-120km and you can connect them. Because then you get commuters, because it makes a difference for them if they need 2 hours commuting per day or one.
Well, you're right, if a bit behind the times. This has been in place for years and is Amtrak's ONE success story. It's profitable, convenient, and people use and like it.
In attempting to reform Amtrak, legislatures point to this and say "why can't everything be like the Northeast". This is an absurd question, of course. The NE is densely populated and parking is a mess. Of course that will be the only place this works.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Or am I the only one that doesn't want my tax dollars going to pay for something which benefits Disney and Steve Wynn? If you want to improve public infrastructure, that's great, but this seems quite commercial to me.
10MM seems low to me for such a big job though. Maybe this is just the gov't portion to get the project moving? (and if this is the case, how much will we be on the hook for if things go bad?) I'm skeptical here...
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Yeah, Los Angeles and Las Vegas being the tiny little burgs that they are.
Actually, wouldn't it be cheaper just to legalize gambling throughout California and not just the reservations?
Or does legislating morality just get the politicians too damned hard? Or wet in the case of the females.
They're not hybrids in the same sense of the word. A diesel electric train is basically a dirty great diesel electricity generator which powers an electric motor. There's no drive between diesel engine and wheels.
That's a hybrid, more specifically a series hybrid.
There are several (non-reservation) casinos in LA County... Commerce; Bicycle Club (around Bell Gardens?); Hollywood Park (Inglewood?).
Nothing to see here; Move along.
"BART only runs because it is expensive and impractical."
I was in the SF area back in 1989, as a tourist and i though the BART system was pretty slick, we had arrived in california by car, so we had a car, but when we went sight seeing in SF the bart system let us get to various sights without everybody having to go the same places on the same schedule.
and what about the subway system in NY? is that 'expensive' and 'impractical'? cities of that size need mass transit, not everyone can drive cars, or we'd need 456 lane highways, kinda link how the 'internet' is evolving to have OC-1920 lines.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
sigh, i mean OC-1536 and OC-3072... an OC-1920 would be nice, but it would really be some combination of other OC-connections.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
s/Rocky/Sierra Nevada/
Nothing to see here; Move along.
Mod parent up.
I was going to post about the DesertExpress too.
I don't understand why it needs to end in Victorville; there's still freight trains running through the pass; why can't it?
Nothing to see here; Move along.
"The NE is densely populated and parking is a mess."
there are quite a few urban centers where parking is a mess. I was in austin, TX once, I can't imagine anyplace with worse parking without trying. although the LBJ presidential libary is there, but if you try to Park there, they brand you as a student!!! just because the library is technically part of the campus, and i think you're like supposed to get a parking sticker or something if you're a visitor...
crazy. but at least, when i was there in 2002? was it, you could fight your tickets online.. since i was an out of state visitor that was the easiest way to fight it. It wasn't a planned stop, i was on a road trip, and i decided where i went based on who i could get a hold of by telephone/internet. (yes, i had a laptop, and with 802.11b there were even a few cutting edge fast foods with hotspots)
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Not just any ride, but a free ride for Disney. And it's going to be slower than the TGV, which is already proven technology.
Is it truly paranoia when the auto manufacturers and oil companies have been convicted and fined in the past of forming a cabal which happened to ruin mass transit in many cities?
US should start investigating in technology like the french fast rtain (TGV).
The TGV carried more than a billion people in 2006 !
The company running the TGV (SNCF) maintains more than 30,000 km (19,000 miles) of tracks.
http://www.sncf.com/fr_FR/html/media/CH0002-FINANCES-CHIFFRES-CLES/BR0093-10-chiffres-choc/MD0105_20070615-DOCUMENT-CONSULTER.html
And this year SNCF for the 4th year in row, has been profitable (http://www.sncf.com/fr_FR/html/media/CH0002-FINANCES-CHIFFRES-CLES/BR0446-2007-4e-annee-beneficiaire/MD0005_20080319-DOCUMENT-CONSULTER.html). Yes taxpayers did pay at first, but it does not mean that can not be profitable at some point.
TGV is purely electric powered. 80% of electricity in France comes from nuclear power plant.
California should start a TGV-like program now. Airlines are getting worst everyday here in US. We need a oil-free alternative.
I thought it was cool based on the headline, but then the article had to remind me that this is Disneyland as in Disney in California. Am I the only one that thinks 45 Mil is a bit pricey for such a short stretch of track?
we're about to build a $4.2 billion bridge in portland, or. 4 billion doesn't buy what it used to. one concern though is that if these magnets aren't all being built in the USA we really aren't giving all that much money to US workers.
Yeah... the last 2 trips i took were to Dallas on AA and those planes were like buses... not even nice cross country buses, I'm talking cross-town tin cans... no service, no room, no comfort... just a 3 hour ride to get where you're going.
I'd pay the same price for a longer ride if there was 2 times the comfort level. A 5-6 hour trip to Dallas or where ever... if I could A) get some sleep or B) sit at a bar and have a couple drinks with a 'friend'
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
My point is that it's not out of the running... they'll have to run it like any other business, to make a profit. If they can pay their expenses on ticket price alone with a little left over to pay down the debt over time and a little more to put away for upgrades and periodic replacements... it would be a successful business.
Why does everything have to be a huge money maker? To appease investors? If you have a decent business plan you don't need those parasites anyways.
Oh and BTW... 90% of LAers are lower middle class citizens who are the target of this type of transportation... and you bet your ass they use public transit when it's available. Bus numbers are way up in LA these days.
The Hollywood celebutantes aren't driving to Vegas anyways... they are flying, so they aren't a part of the equation at all... unless the Maglev could get a party license for some private cars... then it might be THE way to get to Vegas.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.