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The liberals $43 billion train to no where...

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senseamp said:
SF to San Diego, buddy.
It's going to be great. You enjoy sitting in traffic telling everyone how much money you are "saved" by keeping your state stuck in the past.
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I'm not a retard. I will be on a plane. :biggrin:

LOL at "stuck in the past".

Trains are the new tech. 😀
 
rudder said:
This thing could be real profitable.... If round trip tickets are sold for $1500.
Click to expand...

That won't even come close.

Even Jerry can't explain how this will be profitable, but this is his wet dream, so he doesn't care how much it costs.
 
senseamp said:
SF to San Diego, buddy.
It's going to be great. You enjoy sitting in traffic telling everyone how much money you are "saved" by keeping your state stuck in the past.
Click to expand...

SF to San Diego someday. Nowhere to nowhere for the first 5 years.

If you look at the numbers, and the assumptions behind them, you'll find the system will never break even. Not even if it always runs at 100% capacity.
It won't be as cheap as flying, and won't be as fast. The other absolute certainty is that it will cost far more than the 67 billion estimate. The last big CA public works project was the new bay bridge, estimate was 1 billion, ended up at 7 billion, and it's screwed up, badly screwed up.
 
Greenman said:
SF to San Diego someday. Nowhere to nowhere for the first 5 years.

If you look at the numbers, and the assumptions behind them, you'll find the system will never break even. Not even if it always runs at 100% capacity.
It won't be as cheap as flying, and won't be as fast. The other absolute certainty is that it will cost far more than the 67 billion estimate. The last big CA public works project was the new bay bridge, estimate was 1 billion, ended up at 7 billion, and it's screwed up, badly screwed up.
Click to expand...

We are talking about 20 years.
If we are nowhere near full employment, can build it without generating significant inflation, and it's useful, we should build it. Money is not the end all be all, it's a tool for building things. The real valuable is human time and potential for creating things. If we are idling those to save money, that's the dumbest thing a society can do.
 
Drako said:
🙄

Of course it's not. But public projects need to make some sort of fiscal sense, and this makes very little sense, fiscal and otherwise.
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Until we have full capacity utilization, it just has to make more sense than people sitting idle collecting unemployment. And it does. Good enough for me.
 
Federal money should be the first alarm. This should be paid for by welfare reduction, by getting able bodied people off their asses and make them work on it. It's still a stupid liberal idea, especially if it increases our debt. A speed train through California is hardly an infrastructure improvement!
 
Greenman said:
The last big CA public works project was the new bay bridge, estimate was 1 billion, ended up at 7 billion, and it's screwed up, badly screwed up.
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I chuckled.

But, in reality, it really isn't that big of a deal. Still safer than the previous wreck.
 
compuwiz1 said:
Federal money should be the first alarm. This should be paid for by welfare reduction, by getting able bodied people off their asses and make them work on it. It's still a stupid liberal idea, especially if it increases our debt. A speed train through California is hardly an infrastructure improvement!
Click to expand...

I now think it's a good idea, because you are against it. Blaming liberals and poor people, as always.


For someone that preaches about self-reliance, you sure do spend a lot of time blaming liberals and the government.

:hmm:
 
I live in socal and generally like public transportation but this has always been a terrible idea, for exactly the reason DucatiMonster696 stated above. Sure, a fast train beats sitting in a car, but at that point why not just fly which is 1)already available, 2) faster, and 3) about the same price for a ticket, assuming the train is ever completed?

edit: and if the point is to spend money to get people doing something instead of sitting around collecting unemployment, this ranks near the bottom of useful ways to do that in terms of money spent per person employed
 
They said the Minnesota Light Rail would flop too. It didn't.
Minnesotans love it. Their Light-Rail has been expanded over and over.
People want, need, and use mass transit whatever the cost.
LA to SF is the perfect plan for a mass transit system.
I've driven from San Diego to SF. Took some eight hours by car.
This system will be loved and no doubt expanded down to San Diego and north past SF.
It won't not take long for the state to recoup their investment.
Mass transit is always a win win situation.
And the more of it we build, the lower the cost and more streamlined the process will become.
Hey... Someone's got to do it.
Think of it as our national highway system.
Took a depression to get that going.
Try shutting down the national highway system and see what happens.
 
sportage said:
They said the Minnesota Light Rail would flop too. It didn't.
Minnesotans love it. Their Light-Rail has been expanded over and over.
People want, need, and use mass transit whatever the cost.
LA to SF is the perfect plan for a mass transit system.
I've driven from San Diego to SF. Took some eight hours by car.
This system will be loved and no doubt expanded down to San Diego and north past SF.
It won't not take long for the state to recoup their investment.
Mass transit is always a win win situation.
And the more of it we build, the lower the cost and more streamlined the process will become.
Hey... Someone's got to do it.
Think of it as our national highway system.
Took a depression to get that going.
Try shutting down the national highway system and see what happens.
Click to expand...

I think that is the worry 😉

There is a range in distance where a high speed train might make sense because it is a lot easier than dealing with airports and the distance is not so long that air travel is much faster. ie if you have to go 1000 miles flying is likely faster regardless; the LA to SF route is actually in the range where a high speed train could make sense (SD to SF might be at the upper bound), the issue though is that due to the terrain present the high speed train has to go through not-so-high-speed areas........and suddenly the airplane is looking faster.
 
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sportage said:
They said the Minnesota Light Rail would flop too. It didn't.
Minnesotans love it. Their Light-Rail has been expanded over and over.
People want, need, and use mass transit whatever the cost.
LA to SF is the perfect plan for a mass transit system.
I've driven from San Diego to SF. Took some eight hours by car.
This system will be loved and no doubt expanded down to San Diego and north past SF.
It won't not take long for the state to recoup their investment.
Mass transit is always a win win situation.
And the more of it we build, the lower the cost and more streamlined the process will become.
Hey... Someone's got to do it.
Think of it as our national highway system.
Took a depression to get that going.
Try shutting down the national highway system and see what happens.
Click to expand...
No we don't. Since when is the expansion of a government project proof of popularity? If it is, then the Iraq war was immensely popular.
 
zinfamous said:
I now think it's a good idea, because you are against it. Blaming liberals and poor people, as always.


For someone that preaches about self-reliance, you sure do spend a lot of time blaming liberals and the government.

:hmm:
Click to expand...

You are a really stupid fuck. Good idea because I'm against it? That's just great! Self reliance and poor people have nothing to do with this, unless you make them more dependent on their own work and less reliant on government. If you have a problem with that, you must have your lips firmly wrapped around the government tit. Well, do you? I get up and go to work every day. What do you do, besides sit around and get stoned all day, while waiting for your gov. benefits? I do blame liberals for the 8.5 trillion in additional debt since Obama took office.
 
Greenman said:
SF to San Diego someday. Nowhere to nowhere for the first 5 years.

If you look at the numbers, and the assumptions behind them, you'll find the system will never break even. Not even if it always runs at 100% capacity.
It won't be as cheap as flying, and won't be as fast. The other absolute certainty is that it will cost far more than the 67 billion estimate. The last big CA public works project was the new bay bridge, estimate was 1 billion, ended up at 7 billion, and it's screwed up, badly screwed up.
Click to expand...
Surely at some point it will be cheaper than flying. Trains are the most energy efficient form of travel, security should be cheaper, and I am guessing that rail line maintenance won't be significantly more expensive than airliner maintenance. Although admittedly that is just a guess. Trains also have the option of recapturing energy in braking.

I like high speed rail in general, even though it won't be coming to Tennessee in my lifetime.
 
werepossum said:
Surely at some point it will be cheaper than flying. Trains are the most energy efficient form of travel, security should be cheaper,
Click to expand...

I had not thought of this before now but I would have to argue that...maybe security is something to think about in this day and age?

800 miles of track to be guarded or fenced off, probably not very well.

How hard would it be to destroy a small piece of track, enabling a derailment of a 220mph train?
 
Elevenpog said:
I had not thought of this before now but I would have to argue that...maybe security is something to think about in this day and age?

800 miles of track to be guarded or fenced off, probably not very well.

How hard would it be to destroy a small piece of track, enabling a derailment of a 220mph train?
Click to expand...

Considering we don't know how to properly secure the Mexican border, would you seriously consider we could manage this much better? It's a train wreck waiting to happen.
 
Elevenpog said:
I had not thought of this before now but I would have to argue that...maybe security is something to think about in this day and age?

800 miles of track to be guarded or fenced off, probably not very well.

How hard would it be to destroy a small piece of track, enabling a derailment of a 220mph train?
Click to expand...
That is a good point. I was thinking of bombs or hijacking, but track security will be a major expense.
 
Elevenpog said:
I had not thought of this before now but I would have to argue that...maybe security is something to think about in this day and age?

800 miles of track to be guarded or fenced off, probably not very well.

How hard would it be to destroy a small piece of track, enabling a derailment of a 220mph train?
Click to expand...
You might as well make that comment about anything with long stretches (eg: pipelines, highways...).
 
sportage said:
They said the Minnesota Light Rail would flop too. It didn't.
Minnesotans love it. Their Light-Rail has been expanded over and over.
People want, need, and use mass transit whatever the cost.
LA to SF is the perfect plan for a mass transit system.
I've driven from San Diego to SF. Took some eight hours by car.
This system will be loved and no doubt expanded down to San Diego and north past SF.
It won't not take long for the state to recoup their investment.
Mass transit is always a win win situation.
And the more of it we build, the lower the cost and more streamlined the process will become.
Hey... Someone's got to do it.
Think of it as our national highway system.
Took a depression to get that going.
Try shutting down the national highway system and see what happens.
Click to expand...

I am all in for local mass transit. Spend billions to upgrade the buses and local rail as well as improve and expand the freeways and highways. But this high speed rail is a waste of money and the wrong priority. It will not improve the daily commute of the VAST majority of people who live 1 hour or less from their work.

I won't even repeat what has been said previously about the proponents of the law who completely misled voters about the cost and timeframe of this HSR.
 
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