According to a Sunday Los Angeles Times story, here, the high speed rail (HSR) project, every big-government lover’s answer to all our problems, is starting to receive more unwelcome scrutiny lately. Skyrocketing projected costs and ticket prices, federal subsidy guarantee requirements, incomprehensible ridership projections, and property takings that include, apparently, some part of Buena Park’s Metrolink Station or the adjacent residential development are causing folks to take a harder look at this fiasco in the making.
Things have gotten so bad that even lefty Long Beach State Senator Alan Lowenthal is upset.
HSR should be a source of great alarm to everyone in north Orange County, both in terms of its cost to the taxpayers, the damage that it will do to established communities, and also because so many clueless but ambitious politicians like Harry Sidhu and Lorri Galloway are using it as a mantra to solve unemployment woes in California, and in particular Orange County.
Read the rest of “High Speed Rail Boondoggle Splashed With Cold Water”
My first reaction to this post, before I go and read the Times article – and I will! – is that I have no problem with tens of thousands of construction jobs going to Inland Empire and LA County workers. Hell, they’re our neighbors – I got lots of friends there myself. I can’t answer for what Lorri or Harry might say about “in particular Orange County.” Certainly many thousands of the 45,000 PERMANENT (non-construction jobs) expected would go to OC, but of course that would be several years from now.
Okay, I’ll be back.
Brother Vern.
A side bar. Glad you weren’t picking on my spelling and grammer, which is far from perfect. Thanks!
As to HSR jobs. Long before these jobs are created I need you to show me the money. Show us the $80 billion dollars for this 800 mile choo choo from Sacramento to San Diego as advertised.
No, I don’t want to focus on Anaheim to LA. That 25 mile leg is not what we were asked to vote on.
*So Tony..tell us the story….you want to use those guys hanging out at the entrance of Home Deport of Harbor Blvd. instead of those legal inlanders from Riverside and San Berdo?
Did not the nay sayers of yesteryear, say the same thing about the freeway network most people use today?
Cook.
Where is the $80 billion dollars for this 800 mile HST going to come from?
You got a teaser $2.5 billion down payment from president Obama. It’s like joining a rec center where they give you free access for the first 30 days and than you need to sign up and pay up if you intend to show up.
I’m not sure whether these ridership estimates – the high ones or the low ones – take into account the fact that, as Debbie Cook mentioned on my thread the other day, we won’t be flying airplanes back and forth across California in twenty years, nor will we be driving much, due to the cruel realities of peak oil.
http://orangejuiceblog.com/2010/02/the-high-speed-rail-is-coming-brother/comment-page-1/#comment-117809
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6169#more
To me this means a few things that aren’t mentioned here:
– Starting HSR as soon as possible is a necessity for California.
– I THINK it means the ridership will be much higher.
– And wouldn’t that also bring the ticket prices down? (I’m not an economics expert.)
Cook’s right that when we built the railroads, the interstates, and so much else that we’ve come to rely on and take for granted, there were always conservative naysayers who just kneejerkly opposed any big public project. It’s just in some of our genes.
And likewise there were always crooks who rushed to take advantage and make a killing. Let’s just try to do this right.
Brother Vern.
Respecfully I would not lump all who oppose this HSR plan as being knee jerk conservatives.
I am awaiting your response to my simple question. Show me the money?
You and Meg W. are in the same group. Point out the problems but fail to provide solutions.
Does that indicate your vote for Ms. Whitman in the GOP primary?
Sigh, Brother Larry. I will research your question when I have time – so many projects! But I can show you 30 billion of the money right now – the fact that we will need 50 billion, not 80 billion.
Yes I know where you got that new 80 billion figure – it’s from this extremist libertarian anti-government site: http://reason.org/news/show/1003044.html (The “Reason Foundation.”)
And they actually say “65 to 81 billion” which immediately became the “80 billion” talking point with you folks.
And they created this – well – extra 15 to 31 billion overrun – based on the “history of cost overruns in California” and the “high cost of building.” The kind of stuff you can use to inflate the costs of something you don’t want to happen. But even if building is costly, it shouldn’t be thought of as pure “cost” – that’s just one side of the coin – the other is employment and tax revenue.
Okay, I’ll go try to find you another 30 or 40 billion… later or tomorrow.
Thanks brother Vern. Together we will solve all of these minor financial challenges.
PS: while you argue with Reason Foundation’s projected cost numbers care to comment on the original data on cost of a train ticket and HST ridership numbers which somehow have tanked long before the first shovel of dirt is moved?????????
Respecfully I would not lump all who oppose this HSR plan as being knee jerk conservatives.
Bro L, I did not use that phrase, it would be sort of meaningless.
But I would like to point out that on issues like this I use the term conservative respectfully and without the ironic quotation marks I usually use.
For example when I discuss folks who support torture, unnecessary wars, erosions of our civil liberties and abridgement of the Constitution, imposition of religious morality through civil law, and the monstrous growth of a national-security surveillance state, I always say “conservative”in quotes, because I contend there’s nothing conservative about any of that.
On the other hand, when it comes to fiscal issues like high-speed rail, even though I may disagree with you, I feel your position is legitimately conservative, hence no scare quotes!
Capische?
#2, I don’t want to use anybody. The thing’s a crock. Rock Candy Mountain.
Oh that’s easy, pick on Ron and Anna Winship. You and I will live long enough for me to tweak you over this Tony.
Rebuilding the railway corridor is the future. Using the HSR as the front is misleading.