Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris is associate dean of academic affairs and a professor of urban planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and a research affiliate at the Mineta Transportation Institute in San Jose.
U.S. can look to Europe’s example — but it will be a waste of time.
Oh, and, “guilty”
2029?
So Brown (and future socialista governors) are going to rape taxpayers for 14 years before they say we can’t do it?
I hate California Communists.
$68 billion? I wonder how high something like this would be on a muzzie terrorist target list.
You know liberals don’t consider such things but rational people should.
Did her mom spill an institutional sized can of alphabet soup when she named this chick?
It’ll cost half a trillion by completion, travel 50 mph, but be the only way to do so because California will have banned private vehicles by then.
She should go to Ancestry.com to see how closely she’s related to Rosie O’Donnell. Somewhere down the line, they have to be related.
Will never happen.
She thinks money grows on trees.
The demand for high speed rail isn’t even there and our late Willie Green would be the first to tell her that’s a fact.
All the wishful thinking in the world cannot undo economic reality.
Where’s Willie?
L
She thinks people will be riding high speed rail in California by 2025. I say the median per capita income in California, adjusted for inflation, will be 25% less than today, and California will be part of Mexico. Let’s see who is right.
The 68 billion (probably more like 100 billion) could be better spent on desalinization plants.
Looks like Andrew Duggan
What a moron.
By the time this “sucking sound” train system is fully built, it will cost more than 250 billion.
Even that 68 billion figure is a ‘wink wink’ number. I’ve already seen estimates it will climb to over 100 billion.
How else will California get the workers from the barrios to their jobs?
Southwest Airlines does that now...at least once an hour.
And it costs taxpayers a lot less than 68+ billion bucks.
high speed rail is not synonymous with forward progress in delivering transportation solutions that are economically optimal.
california high speed rail in particular seems to have the same shine as BART did in the early 1960s— overly idealistic, expenses underestimated, and perennially running in the red, sucking transportation funds away from more worthy and more practical mass transit such as bus and conventional rail.
Once the density criteria are met (note: not a given in California or the Western US in general), one can and probably should look to Europe as a role model. However, when one does look to Europe, one must note that (unlike California) Europe has an advanced conventional mass transit grid already in place, consisting of interlocked bus and conventional (though usually overhead-electrified) rail. Building a high speed rail transit system without adequate conventional mass transit feeds at each and every stop will simply duplicate the BART fiasco.
Compiling wish lists of options and gimmicks for a pie in the sky solution does not make one an expert at urban planning (although these days it apparently is plenty good enough for a professorship in urban planning at UCLA Luskin School).
LOL groundbreaking 6 to 7 years after proposal and then they wont even be ready till 2029 anther 14 years.
How about that for Government funded efficiency!
Just in time for the wide spread uses of the Self-driving car.
As for the ‘train station’ the problem with any train is where you go from the point of arrival. Most U.S. cities particularly Los Angious are highly depended upon the uses of cars. The only real hope of this being work able is providing the ability to get wherever you want from and to the station in a timely and reliable manner.
Right now, San Francisco is busy constructing an underground high speed rail station before designing and laying track right of way out of the station.
How is that for well thought out urban planning solutions?
BART looked to Europe for solutions in the early 1960s— and rejected them all for a unique (and therefore more expensive) design. There is no evidence that California HSR will do anything but follow suit and repeat the mistakes of the past.
If you want to look at the follies of building HSR to nowhere, check out Taiwan’s HSR. It was very expensive to build and operates under a perennial deficit.