Posted on 01/17/2010 10:04:00 PM PST by Corky Boyd
China just completed the world’s fastest high speed rail line, a 664 mile stretch between Wuhan in central China to Guangzhou, north of Hong Kong. The significant fact is not that it is the fastest rail link (217 mph average), but that it was built in less than four years. If we were to commit the resources to a similar effort, we wouldn’t have completed the environmental impact statement much less resolved the innumerable lawsuits in the same amount of time. The Lilliputians have simply immobilized us.
Lest anyone think such an effort was ever beyond our capabilities, in 1869 less than four years after construction began, we completed the 1,775 mile long transcontinental railroad, a great deal of it through mountains and hostile territory. Ironically much of the work done then was by Chinese laborers. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned there.
The ability of obstructionists to delay and simply add indefinitely to costs makes large projects in the US like this, almost impossible. Private corporations that must operate at a profit simply cannot afford the delay. Stretching out a project for ten or fifteen years means interest incurred at the beginning just piles up before a revenue stream can hope to pay it off. In many cases it becomes an insurmountable burden. Such was the case in the granddaddy of all obstructionist targets, the Shoreham nuclear plant on the north shore of Long Island.
Twenty-two years after it was ordered, LILCO its owner, threw in the towel and admitted defeat
(Excerpt) Read more at islandturtle.blogspot.com ...
Like someone stated on a similar thread.....it would be as easy and fast for the US to complete a similar project (or any large scale project for that matter) if the government had omplete and total say over everything as in the Chinese Communist state. They were able to take whatever land they wanted and build to whatever low standards they wanted because the government controls all. If that high-speed railway lasts 20 years I’ll be surprised, and if it lasts 20 years without having a catastrophic accident I’ll be equally surprised.
Lawyers
Yeah, they so powful.
They just killed a generation of women.
Their system is corrupt and stifles personal freedom.
Their energy resources are day to day.
A small sliver of a percentage lives above total poverty.
Their consumer goods are tainted, substandard and polluted.
Their water supply is death in a cup.
They’ll be around for a long time. cough.
Two words: Eminent Domain.
All we have to do is shoot or threaten the landowners and lawyers who try to slow us down. Sure it’ll never make a dime of profit, but since when has that ever stopped government?
I predict this project could be as successful as the Massachusetts Big Dig!
>I predict this project could be as successful as the Massachusetts Big Dig!
Never send a communist to do a man’s work.
I’d rather fly than ride high-speed rail.
OTOH I’d rather drive than fly.
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