Sure I see some upside. Very few things are either all good or all bad. We would be employing skilled labor during a time when the private sector isn't building nearly as much as usual. We would be acquiring land which is probably not getting any cheaper, against the time when poverty or population density does force us out of our cars and on to trains. (Which will hopefully be maglev superconductor by then, but will still need land for at least two and preferably three tracks.) We would gain some valuable knowledge about what works and what doesn't in high speed light rail, before we launch into a full scale cross-country venture that will be budgeted at trillions. Not just motive technology, which will be vastly different by the time rail is really practical here, but things like security, crossing roads, siting concerns, grade and stability mediation.
As an engineer, I love high speed rail and its inherent efficiency, especially once we learn to efficiently recapture and store braking energy. It's also somewhat less susceptible than are planes to terrorism and other catastrophic failure. Were we fiscally solvent, I think this would be a good stimulus project, priming the pump. But at the moment, our greatest problem is our crushing debt, and creating yet another hungry mouth just makes that worse. We need to choose our projects very, very carefully, getting at least two needed returns on our investment. An example would be replacing or renovating existing inefficient government buildings with more energy efficient technologies - same stimulus effect, but combined with an immediate return of lower energy consumption and operating costs as well as a building whose life should be much longer. This thing is going to eat and continue eating for little practical benefit in the foreseeable future; it's exactly the kind of project we don't need right now.
Facebook
Twitter