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Location: Cleveland bound with MPLS in the rear-view
5,509 posts, read 11,875,397 times
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Chicago isn't a traditional real estate bubble city. The coasts rise and fall the fastest, as do some sunbelt cities like Denver, Phoenix and Vegas. My family moved from Chicago to San Francisco, and they took a bite to do so, but had they bought that Chicago home in SF instead in 2001 and sold it in 2009 they would have been either bankrupt or in foreclosure with the bank. That's the difference.
US has pothole-laced roads in every major city and decrepit power/water/Net infrastructure
Rail is relevant for freight, which private cos. own and for which speed is irrelevant
Business travel between cities doesn't entail rail/driving; and Net and videoconferencing tech are making much air travel useless and wasteful in modern world of iPads, telecommuting and virtualization
Rail for leisure travel is a taxpayer-subsidized scam to enrich tourism industry and unions which can gain $100K+/yr jobs for useless workers who can't be fired, no matter incompetence or lack of profitability
Any middle-income suburbanite in US should pay for own leisure travel and not depend upon welfare from other taxpayers...and poors suck up far too much welfare from taxpayers already...
We need a coast to coast high speed rail line, I imagine it is the airlines fighting that. Are we so third world that we can't keep up with europe or Japan
HSR makes sense in densely populated corridors, or dense nodes that are relatively close to one another. But we certainly don't need it coast-to-coast. That's a function better served by airlines that don't have to lay out and maintain a whole bunch of infrastructure in the middle of nowhere to serve markets located on either side of that nowhere.
Location: Cleveland bound with MPLS in the rear-view
5,509 posts, read 11,875,397 times
Reputation: 2501
Quote:
Originally Posted by hsw
US has pothole-laced roads in every major city and decrepit power/water/Net infrastructure
Rail is relevant for freight, which private cos. own and for which speed is irrelevant
Business travel between cities doesn't entail rail/driving; and Net and videoconferencing tech are making much air travel useless and wasteful in modern world of iPads, telecommuting and virtualization
Rail for leisure travel is a taxpayer-subsidized scam to enrich tourism industry and unions which can gain $100K+/yr jobs for useless workers who can't be fired, no matter incompetence or lack of profitability
Any middle-income suburbanite in US should pay for own leisure travel and not depend upon welfare from other taxpayers...and poors suck up far too much welfare from taxpayers already...
What you don't get is that business travel via airplane is not feasible. It won't work in the longrun unless the government subsidizes it (which it will, at first). Airlines can't pull a profit by flying mega-ton jets full of fat people and 3 suitcases each coast to coast when oil hits 100+ a barrel again -- it just can't.
Yes they have. Routes are being cleared, contracts are being finalized, rail lines are being prepared. The bulk of the work has yet to start considering it is nearly a 500 mile route. But no other state has taken any independent action of allocating funds and getting projects started other than California.
No Construction starts in 2012 , the planning is almost done. I asked my Cali friend .....and looked it up.
No Construction starts in 2012 , the planning is almost done. I asked my Cali friend .....and looked it up.
Does it bother you that California is building America's first high-speed rail that will cover 800 miles? You can argue over what constitutes "work" on the largest infra-structure effort in the nation but I suggest you review this link I am providing. Environmental reports, station designs, routes are being worked on. That's more than any other state since nothing is happening elsewhere in the country other than California. The first high-speed rail project in the U.S. is in California; that's a fact whether you like it or not!
Location: Cleveland bound with MPLS in the rear-view
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I'll tell you, it bothers me that a state in a budget crisis is doing this with Federal funds. It only benefits your state by and large, it's not even an intra-state network right now. NE and Midwest plans are more cohesive.
Location: Cleveland bound with MPLS in the rear-view
5,509 posts, read 11,875,397 times
Reputation: 2501
My understanding, however, is that the state has been working on this initiative well before this became a nation-wide initiative, and have laid down most of the groundwork on this already, so the NEW costs are relatively small before launch. Is this pretty close?
I'll tell you, it bothers me that a state in a budget crisis is doing this with Federal funds. It only benefits your state by and large, it's not even an intra-state network right now. NE and Midwest plans are more cohesive.
The federal funds are "matching"; in other words for every federal dollar California must match it. When the proposition was approved in 2008 it was a tax increase that California voters approved. That's what makes California different from many other states. We are willing to increase taxes for the good of the state. Republican states never do such a thing because they are cheap and have no sense of long-term gains.
The federal funds are "matching"; in other words for every federal dollar California must match it. When the proposition was approved in 2008 it was a tax increase that California voters approved. That's what makes California different from many other states. We are willing to increase taxes for the good of the state. Republican states never do such a thing because they are cheap and have no sense of long-term gains.
California also benefits from a lot of being loving the climate and environment there. If you tried raising taxes in places like Alabama and Mississippi, then companies and higher paid workers will say "OK its not longer cheap to live here. Whats the point in staying?" Then the state slowly loses its tax revenue because no one wants to stay.
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You can argue over what constitutes "work" on the largest infra-structure effort in the nation but I suggest you review this link I am providing. Environmental reports, station designs, routes are being worked on. That's more than any other state since nothing is happening elsewhere in the country other than California. The first high-speed rail project in the U.S. is in California; that's a fact whether you like it or not! 
