California Going Ahead With Bullet Train

An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from the NY Times: "[California state leaders] have rallied around a plan to build a 520-mile high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, cutting the trip from a six-hour drive to a train ride of two hours and 38 minutes. And they are doing it in the face of what might seem like insurmountable political and fiscal obstacles. The pro-train constituency has not been derailed by a state report this month that found the cost of the bullet train tripling to $98 billion for a project that would not be finished until 2033, by news that Republicans in Congress are close to eliminating federal high-speed rail financing this year, by opposition from California farmers and landowners upset about tracks tearing through their communities or by questions about how much the state or private businesses will be able to contribute."

Comments

High Speed rail

[Archangel Michael]

We already have High Speed Rail, they are called AIRPLANES and can actually go places that a single track cannot. Like Burbank to Oakland, LAX to SFO, Ontario to Sacramento etc etc.

And it costs a lot less to build and maintain that infrastructure than the boondoggle that HSR is gonna be.

If you do the math, you could GIVE everyone a plane ticket a year on Southwest and come out ahead. Someone needs to put up the reality check of what it actually costs per Resident per year to build and then operate.

Of course, the UNIONS are all for this crap, as it will have to be built with Union Labor, who then funnels the dues back to the DNC who support HSR. We used to call those Political Kickbacks. I guess if that is how you have to buy votes ....