California’s High Speed Rail is coming for sure – just last week we were awarded $2.35 billion for it, from President Obama’s kickass stimulus bill!
It’s coming with 130,000 construction jobs and 450,000 permanent jobs for Californians, right when we’re facing the worst unemployment since the Great Depression!
High Speed Rail is on its way, my brother Crab is going to help build it, and in ten, twenty years, the decrepit but lovable old drunk will still be able to impress girls by pointing and saying “I helped build that!”
Yes, it’s coming and there’s no stopping it, and the sooner Californian companies like Siemens and Alstom start up building the “train sets,” the better position Californian industry will be in to provide trains to the rest of the nation as the other states start up their own systems – a new, green, California manufacturing renaissance!
It’s coming and not a minute too early, to begin to wean us off our dependence on foreign oil – a perilous dependence which embroils us in foreign conflicts and was instrumental in creating our latest financial crisis – and it’s coming to drastically reduce air pollution, carbon emissions, and eventually global warming. (Go on, keep your heads in the sand, Republicans, the grownups are taking care of the problem.)
Once we sort through the next immediate set of difficulties – that’s hashing out the details of exactly where the trains will go and how exactly the tracks will be built – then it’ll be coming inexorably, implacably, just like… well, like a really fast train! Best to
get off the tracks. (Once we figure out where they’ll be.)
Portland, Oregon, has recently experienced an economic ripple effect from their investment in sustainable green transportation amounting to a $2.6 billion savings – they’re calling it a “green dividend” and it’s made Portland one of the nation’s leading cities. Our much bigger Green Dividend is coming, with our High Speed Rail system!
Yes, our High Speed Rail system is coming, bringing us into the 21st Century, and you and your kids and your grandkids will go see a 49ers game on a lark and be back for dinner. 
Twenty minutes from Anaheim to LA, brothers and sisters!
It’s coming as a thumb in the eye to all the Nattering Nabobs of Negativism, those familiar naysayers who kvetch that “government can’t do anything right” – which, as an American, I take as a personal affront: What they’re really saying is that you and I can’t get our shit together and do anything right, as this is a government of, by, and for the people. Remember, WE PASSED PROP. 1A, WE (Californians) voted OVERWHELMINGLY for President Obama to do exactly this sort of thing, and WE PAY TAXES!
As a thumb, that is, in the eyes of the suddenly penny-pinching faux-conservatives who sat there for 8 years waving flags for a totally unnecessary trillion-dollar war paid for with China’s credit card, all the time mewling for more and more tax cuts for the richest 1 percent and scamming for more de-regulation of the financial industry, and… I could go on but why bother – the High Speed Rail is coming! (Thomas Friedman might well say “Suck. On. This.“)
It’s coming as the g
reatest, most ambitious public works project since the Depression-era Shasta Dam and Golden Gate Bridge constructions – projects which that decade’s Scrooges likewise decried as wasteful and unworkable boondoggles that could never come to fruition – may they rest in shame.
I’m just saying that California’s High Speed Rail is coming as the triumphant return of Keynesian economics – every time the unregulated and boundlessly greedy and destructive plutocrats drive our nation into a ditch as they did in the 1920’s and 2000’s, the liberals need to come and save the capitalist system with a massive salutary overdose of constructive deficit spending – spending that will get Americans back to work, AND create something useful that will last for the ages. Yes we can! ¡Sí se puede! That’s what we have a country for.
Sign up here to support California’s High Speed Rail: www.ca4hsr.org
(instructions: Hit “play” and read the article again with this as background music.)
That sound you hear is our money going down the drain…
Let me recap, Pedroza. JOBS. Half a million of them. Economic recovery for our state. A green industrial renaissance for California as we build trains for other states. Weaning off oil. Something that lasts and is useful to all of us, unlike a war. How we got out of the Great Depression.
I hope some people read the Krugman column I just posted about all the misleading and politically motivated crazy talk about deficits that is suddenly so trendy this month.
Good grief, Vern. 50 billion dollars on a novelty choo choo that will serve a tiny fraction of California’s population?
Why not just let us keep all that money and stim-u-late the economy ourselves?
BTW, love the reference to The Music man, but you should have used Professor Hill, the snake oil selling con man. Now that would have been about right.
We got trouble right here in(Santa Ana)River City.
I would agree, Brother Bushala, if it were just a question of wasting 50 billion on a novelty choo-choo.
But then there’s JOBS. Half a million of them. Economic recovery for our state. A green industrial renaissance for California as we build trains for other states. Weaning off oil. Something that lasts and is useful to all of us, unlike a war. How we got out of the Great Depression.
And this “tiny fraction” estimation of ridership is highly questionable, a worst-case scenario based on cherrypicked statistics by rightwing groups who religiously oppose these kinds of big public projects. Just like they did in the 1930s.
Alas, Vern, this was not pitched as a “public project.” it was supposed to be financed privately, leverage by revenue streams. Do I recall incorrectly?
Building trains is green? How is that?
The “tiny fraction” issue becomes relevant since the weaning off of oil presupposes a significant ridership. The ridership isn’t there because the number of people who want to take a HS train up the coast is minuscule. The real issue of reducing VMTs involves the urban commute situation that every day hits into the millions in southern and northern California.
HSR is a toy designed to make a very few people rich. It makes Metrolink look like a stellar exemplar of public transit.
And BTW, by the time construction is undertaken on the ROW demolition, track and station construction, every AQMD threshold will be obliterated.
As far as I’m concerned, we can’t build it fast enough. The airline industry has been granted a short reprieve before its death sentence. Want to talk about wasted money – how about the new parking structure at Orange County Airport. Or the remodeling of the Bradley Terminal at LAX. Think that’s how we’ll be moving around California in 20 years? Then you aren’t paying attention to current events: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6169#more
There’s your ridership, Brother Bushala.
I would take A train, over a plane or even driving anyday.
For that distance it takes longer to go through security at the airport.
It also takes longer to taxi out lift off and land a plane, than the 20 minutes the high speed train will take.
Really think people are not going to use it once they realizes these things?
I know I am not making original commentary, but given that we can read all day long about the failed assumptions of this train here: http://reason.org/news/show/the-california-high-speed-rail
I figured I would just paste in Richard Rider’s commentary of today regarding terrorists risks. This train is a bad idea that California can ill afford.
Oh, one more thing, trains are not reliable. Of the last four times I have tried to ride the train to San Diego, not one trip was completed. I have had earthquake, fire and break down all stop my trip and have been force to continue via bus. The forth time I called ahead and it was down for scheduled maintenance. I know a record like that has to be unusual but it is none the less fact.
Anyhow, from Richard Rider today:
Richard Rider Says:
February 9th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
On behalf of terrorists everywhere, let me say that HSR is a Godsend to the Jihad (or whatever cause turns them on).
HSR will be like a plane flying at ground level at supposedly) 220 MPH. Terrorists will take their cue from the French and Russian partisans in WWII who blew up NAZI trains with great success. Planes are hard to bring down — not so for trains.
With HSR, all one need do is put a relatively small explosive charge, properly placed on the rail. Remotely detonate just as a HSR train comes flying up to the spot, and watch the resulting carnage with gleeful satisfaction.
And the best part for terrorists is that one doesn’t even have to be a suicide bomber. Just set the charge, detonate it, and drive away for another bombing later.
One such bombing will be the end of California’s “high speed” rail. For safety purposes, “bullet train” traffic will have to be slowed to 60-70 MPH to reduce casualties from such bombings. Train passenger traffic will plummet, and this useless financial albatross will hang around our necks for decades.
Richard Rider Says:
February 9th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
The normal response of HSR proponents is that terrorists are interested in planes only as missiles they can dive into buildings. But one has to wonder if such Pollyannas have been watching the news since 2001. Does “shoe bomber” or “underpants on fire” ring a bell?
But put that aside. The 9/11 attacks cost the bad guys 20 men. How many must die to blow up a HSR train track? Zero.
A “bullet train,” according to the HSR con men, will carry 950 when fully loaded. Presumably that full load is the terrorists’ target.
So, assuming the bad guys want to repeat the casualties of 9/11 — How may HSR trains much be demolished to kill the same number of people as 9/11?
Three.
With no loss of life to the terrorists.
Richard Rider Says:
February 9th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Remember, our CA HSR is (supposedly) a 220 MPH train. At that speed, if the train left the blown-up track, it would be like a plane coming down.
Almost everyone would likely be killed. Those that weren’t killed, would probably wish they HAD been killed. The graphic pictures of the horribly maimed and dead would be exactly what the terrorists long for.
Most important, HSR an EASY train to wreck. Planes are well protected. HSR takes minimal explosives, and recycles the terrorist. And the terrorists get to pick the worst spot to plant the explosives — perhaps just before reaching a bridge over a river or valley.
Sure, terrorists are willing to die for their cause — but any terrorist (and their bosses) would rather they cause several catastrophes before finally getting killed or caught.
In truth, the terrorists would never get three filled HSR trains to blow up — unless they coordinated the attacks at the same time (sound familiar?). After the attack(s), there would be no more HSR in CA. Just rail.
Andy, I must say you have terrible luck with trains! Nothing like most people’s experience…
This Rider fellow, though, what a movie he must live in! I’d like to borrow the musical soundtrack to his life and listen to it in headphones – just for a little while of course. He looks out at California in the 2010’s and sees a similar landscape to WWII Europe! Partisans and terrorists laying charges undetected and blending back into the forests, perhaps sheltering with sympathetic peasants. Colorful indeed. And an argument against progress in our transportation. NOT.
Hey now that you’re here, Andy – are you not running for Congress again, in the 48th?
Vern,
I am running for State Controller. You can read about my issues here:
http://www.AndyFavor.net
PS: On my train experience, it may be five times I had trouble because one time there was a flooding problem that I recall causing a problem.
Best regards to all!
PPS: Debbie, I am a little disapointed in the oil drum. They banned me from posting! I was always polite.
At the Santa Ana train station where I am doing some US Census training, I came across a newspaper type publication on the high speed trains.
It is put out by TRAC. And there are plenty of copies sitting there for anyone to take and read. I haven’t had the chance to read all of it. But there is info on routes and costs etc.
well worth a read