[MeganC]

“In the face of a slow-motion fiscal train wreck, why would state lawmakers commit to spending $5.8 billion in state and federal funds on the first phase of a high-speed rail line that practically nobody wants in part of the state where practically nobody lives?”

Because that’s the same methodology that got the US Interstate Highway System built. You build in the rural areas first because its cheaper and then you connect the cities. Because when the US Route System was built it was typical for cities to sport nice parkways that led to two-lane and even gravel roads at the county line.

If HSR is built in the urban areas first then it’ll just be a patchwork of local systems that don’t connect to anything and the system won’t address the problems of ever-more crowded airports and freeways.

I know a lot of people hate HSR *even when it is privately funded* as it was in Texas when it was first proposed, but in California the thing is that no new freeways are going to built and the politicians want to CLOSE at least two airports in Southern California, not build new ones. With that state’s population projected to hit fifty million in fifteen years there’s got to be a way to move them all around. Rail wins by default.

I agree that it is not the best choice, but the ‘best’ choice won’t happen because of the politics in this country and, in particular, California.

Southwest Airlines is spending millions to lobby against this project just like they did with the private Texas project because they see it as competition. Much of the anti-rail screeds I see anymore no doubt source from SWA given that they sound like talking points from the Democrats.

For instance, calling the first stage of construction a ‘train to nowhere’ as if it will be the only stage ever built. Was I-70 in rural Kansas and rural Missouri a ‘road to nowhere’ when it became the first Interstate to be constructed? Or was it just the first part of a much larger project that took over forty years to complete?

The objection that rail will cost too much when California is already broke? Well, at least it is something tangible the taxpayers will have as opposed to more money for teachers pensions and more money for illegal aliens to attend college for free.

My favorite talking point is the repeated use of the word ‘Boondoggle’. At this point anyone who uses that word is just a braying ass who can’t come up with their own ideas so they just bray “BOONDOGGLE!!!” as if that makes them sound intelligent. If all you got to argue against this project is one word then please STFU and allow more intelligent people to make an intelligent argument against the project.

By the way, a French firm recently offered to take over the project and to build it with their own money if the route would be shifted from the eastern side of the San Joaquin Valley to the western side, which would be more direct and save about $30 billion dollars. The politicians, Republican and Democrat, objected because too many of them have schemed to have the project run across their properties along Hwy 99 so they can screw the taxpayers out of more money.

The question here is not about whether or not it should be built, but why we’re not letting the French build it on their own and where they want to? And barring the French, why isn’t the state of California insisting on building it where it will save $30 billion dollars?

[Olog-hai]

They are not funding this in the same way they funded the interstate highways. That in my mind does not excuse how the interstate highways were executed; the major problem is here how the federal government’s regulations and the politicking here have resulted in a politically-charged right of way for the railroad in question that reduces its utility while increasing its costs, and on top of that how something like this ought to cost far less than even a new-build four-lane interstate (even with electrification), and yet even worse how the best practice of overseas gets ignored (building next to an interstate highway—how easy is that?—new right of way building is extremely minimal).

I am of the mind that every interstate and airport should have been privately funded, mind you. When it comes to those transportation modes, though, this country actually adopted a grossly anti-rail stance when they decided to get into the transportation business and funding infrastructure through allegedly “dedicated” taxes. They had no qualms taxing the railroads, especially their passenger side, out of business, while in some cases providing direct subsidy to airports (and I can only take the word of the government that it is only the gas tax that funds the highways—given their penchant for “creative accounting”, I tend not to believe a single word they say though)—yet the federal government had no problems taxing passenger tickets at a rate of 10 percent during the 50s and 60s and throwing that money into the general fund instead of applying it towards passenger rail infrastructure in like manner to how gas taxes are allegedly applied towards interstate asphalt and naught else.

In the 1930s, the then-new streamlined diesel locomotives were geared to achieve a top speed of 120 miles per hour (which was really high speed for back then), and now thanks to FRA regulation, only 450 miles of railroad in the northeast can reach and exceed 100 mph legally—and that’s eight decades later. What’s wrong with that picture?