California's bullet train to bankruptcy has more problems getting on track

Michael Barone:
California's "High-Speed" Rail boondoggle: Getting worse all the time
Among its many problems:
...
The fact that no airline currently offers nonstop service from either Bakersfield or Fresno, its larger neighbor to the north, to San Jose suggests that the demand for high-speed service over this stretch is severely limited.
...
Another point: As McQuillen and Park point out, the High-Speed Rail folks have abandoned the original plans for dedicated track from San Jose to San Francisco and from Los Angeles to Anaheim.

Genuine high-speed rail, like Japan's Shinkansen (which was opened in 1964) and France's TGV, requires dedicated track. Otherwise, the trains have to slow down so they won't run into commuter or freight trains on the same track.

So instead of the promised two hours and 50 minutes to get from downtown Los Angeles to downtown San Francisco, the "high-speed" train is going to take about four hours.
...
There is more.

Planes look like a better means of transportation at this point.  Hot rodding 19th-century technology does not appear to be the answer to transportation issues.   It is extremely costly and mired in practical problems.

Meanwhile California is allowing its highway infrastructure to crumble.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more