California Requests Stimulus Funding For Bullet Train 567
marquinhocb writes "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger requested $4.7 billion in federal stimulus money Friday to help build an 800-mile bullet train system from San Diego to San Francisco. 'We're traveling on our trains at the same speed as 100 years ago,' the governor said. 'That is inexcusable. America must catch up.' Planners said the train would be able to travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes, traveling at speeds of more than 200 miles per hour. About time! There comes a point when 'let's add another lane' is no longer a viable option!"
Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
They should do San Jose to Portland instead. The sheer volume of techies passing between these two cities would make such a railway line profitable. Intel alone runs a small fleet of private jets to ferry staff back and fourth, because it's cheaper than filling commercial flights. And that's just the internal traffic within a single company.
Also, Portland and San Jose is full of the sort of people who like trains, so the opposition would be less.
Writen like someone who's not riden the train (Score:5, Interesting)
Acela isn't as fast as that, but it's arguably a bigger security issue, as it runs through Boston, NYC, Philly, and DC downtowns.
It works just like a commuter rail train. You arrive at the station. The train pulls up, you've got a few minutes to get on, tops. You get on the train, grab a seat, throw your suitcase overhead or at the end of the car, and relax. Pull out your laptop, make a call, or sit in the quiet car for relaxation.
Everything in your scenario is pure FUD. I'd bet the ridership will match that of Acela on the East Coast -- lots of business riders, often going to and from on the same day.
Airports and airplanes make way more sense (Score:2, Interesting)
Why tear up land for something like this? I've used trains a number of times, and although interesting rail is just not as good a solution as buses or, especially, air travel.
And here I'm not just talking big planes. I'm talking regional airports that, if funded to the same level, could provide an amazing degree of flexibility in travel, to places all over and not just two fixed points.
Airplane travel is not even that much different in terms of fuel consumption than trains, and could be improved if we spent R&D money on that instead of more train follies. For a nation as spread out as America, it's more important to cover more area.
Re:Too expensive (Score:3, Interesting)
Not really, no. At least not in California. New freeways here cost $1 billion per mile, and that was an estimate from ten years ago. A project to add one lane in each direction to the 91 freeway between the 71 (a freeway) and 241 (a tollway) is nearly $100 million for a mere five miles, and that's in an area where not much has to happen in the way of eminent domain. When you get into city areas with houses and businesses, the numbers skyrocket.
Train to nowhere? (Score:3, Interesting)
Typical Bay Aryan.
You are the chosen ones.
In fact all that high speed rail needs to do is hook up with CalTrain or BART.
Just send the bay area people down Amtrack to BART from Sacramento and call the project complete if the bay area non-sense is taking too long.
The best part about the central valley route is it's relative cheapness and flatness.
I can't see a route more or less down I-5 costing as much as (much less more then) a route in fucking France (spit).
Land in Europe is insanely expensive and every square inch is someones ancestral home.
You can't plant a garden, much less run a rail line, without hitting ancent relics.
Re:It will never happen (Score:2, Interesting)
When the other commenter said "if California can do this any state can", he wasn't talking about the money issue. He was talking about delays caused by "all of the NIMBY's and environmental impact statements", as mentioned by the grandparent comment.
I suspect that assessment is incorrect, on the grounds that a lot of environmentalists tend to be in *favor* of such trains, on the theory that they reduce motor vehicle traffic.
> Not to mention they have more of a 'need' for this type of transport
It's more than that. You're headed in the right direction saying they have more need, but it would be even more accurate to say they have an actual *use* for a bullet train, where a lot of other states wouldn't. Southern California is basically one great big city, so public transportation is widely available and city-to-city passenger trains are actually *practical*, much like in Europe and Japan. People could take the buss to the train station in San Diego, hop on the bullet train, get off in San Francisco, and take the streetcar or a taxi to their final destination.
Whereas, a bullet train in Indiana would be a pointless curiosity; its actual usefulness in practice would be virtually nil.
Re:It will never happen (Score:4, Interesting)
Wrong - Tax revenue from property tax has grown faster than any other California revenue source, outpacing inflation + population growth by 50%+
You don't think it actually costs $400k to build a house in Tracy or Apple Valley, do you? Prop 13 forced the cities to rig the system. Here's how it works:
1. People want housing, developer wants to build a house... City has to expand services, including schools, police, roads, water & sewer.
2. Cities set up exorbitant planning and permit fee's to offset costs. These fee's can be as high as $100,000 per house!
3. Permit fee's build in a market floor. Any house with a valid occupancy permit is worth more than the fee's. This lifts all home values.
4. Fed loans banks fiat money at obscenely low rates. Banks turn around and loan it to home buyers at higher rates.
5. Homeowner's now pay banks 5 - 6 - 7% on permit fee's collected up front, rather than as yearly property taxes. Bankers laugh all the way their country clubs, where they meet with their colleagues and find ways to encourage more.
6. Lather rinse repeat for 30 years...
Re:It will never happen (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It will never happen (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money... (Score:2, Interesting)
That's right. A lot of it got sent to Iraq on pallets that disappeared, or went to the executives of companies like Halliburton who get to charge whatever they like for faulty wiring that electrocutes our soldiers because of the no-bid contracts.
Next to burning piles of money to make smores, the war in Iraq has probably been the least effective use of our money that one could conceive of.
Re:It will never happen (Score:3, Interesting)
But our standard High Speed Train service runs at either 125mph (on the Great Western Line) or 140mph (East Coast or West Coast Mainline), which is significantly faster than anything in the US. Even those speeds mean that London-Manchester (e.g.) is much faster by train than by plane.
Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money... (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed, that's not a bad analogy for money spent on bombs. More blew up than burnt, but anyway... Don't confuse Money with Wealth. Money is an abstraction. You can print as much as you like, it's value remains backed by the wealth of the country (ultimately, anyway) which is why you can have US$1 = 47 Indian Rupees. When the GP points out that a trillion dollars has been spent on military adventures, it doesn't matter so much that a lot of the money bought things from american arms companies, paying soldiers' (and mercenaries') wages, as much as it represents that portion of the country's wealth which is represented by 1 trillion dollars being ploughed into unreclaimables such as keep a navy active in the area, building temporary bases, firing ammunition and detonating bombs, flights, supply deliveries... oh, and medical care for the many wounded US soldiers.
So no, the government didn't set money on fire - that would actually increase the value of the dollar. Instead, they effectively set a lot of your country's wealth on fire and thus devalued the dollar even more. In real terms, yes, you would have retained wealth better if you had invested it in infrastructure such as trains, rather than in flying hundreds of thousands of people back and forth around the world.
I'd go into the ethical side of the Iraq invasion - the lies about WMD and how Saddam was a threat to the US, the thousands of deaths resulting and the pillaging of a foreign country's natural resources under threat of military action, but I think the economic argument is the only one that will resonate with some people.