The Antiplanner » Tag » high-speed rail

Tag Archives: high-speed rail

When the Facts Change, Some Minds Don’t

By | | News commentary, Transportation
9 Comments

John Maynard Keynes is supposed to have said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” For many politicians including President Obama, the answer is, “I ignore the facts and stick to my preconceived notions.”

Back in 2008, California voters approved high-speed rail based on the promises that, at a cost of $43 billion, California would have trains by 2020 that would go from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two hours and forty minutes. Attracting 60 million riders a year, the trains would earn such great operational profits that private investors would provide $6.5 billion to $7.5 billion worth of capital funds.

Now the California High-Speed Rail Authority admits that cost will be more than double that amount, it will carry fewer passengers than expected, it won’t be done until 2030 at the earliest, and no private investors are interested in supporting a project based on phony premises. Moreover, the latest word is that the trains will take longer than two hours and forty minutes, which means they will be far less competitive with air travel than promised. So it is not surprising that most California voters want to reconsider the project.

But not the Obama administration. Even though Congress has not authorized or appropriated more than a tiny fraction of the funds needed to complete the California boondoggle, the Obama administration says it “is not going to flinch” on its support for the project. “The worst thing we could do is make obligations to folks and start to renege on our word.”

Continue reading →

Moving in for the Kill–or to Be Fleeced?

By | | News commentary, Transportation
7 Comments

The Voice of Orange County reports that opponents of California’s high-speed rail boondoggle are “moving in for the kill.” But the article presents no clear path for killing the train to nowhere. While there are lawsuits, opponents in Congress, and critics in the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, the final decision will be made by the Democrat-dominated state legislature, which takes its cue from Governor Jerry Brown, who has endorsed the spending of $7 billion on a rail line that few will ever use.

The latest objective poll shows that 37 percent of the people who voted for high-speed rail in 2008 have changed their minds and would vote against it today now that the cost has doubled and the admitted benefits declined. (Only 3 percent of people who voted no say they would vote yes today.)

Continue reading →

If You Don’t Like the Data, Attack the Messenger

By | | News commentary, Transportation
2 Comments

California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office announced this week that the state is about to waste $6 billion or more starting construction on a high-speed rail line that will never be completed. “The availability of funding to complete a usable segment is highly uncertain,” said the report, to which the Antiplanner responds, “Duh!”

Yet some people aren’t ready to hear the truth. Assemblyperson Cathleen Galgiani, who claims to have authored the law that is now expected to cost taxpayers more than $100 billion, “decries” the new report as “misleading and biased.” Her complaint seems to be that there must be some sinister conspiracy against high-speed rail, but the Legislative Analyst’s Office won’t tell her who is behind this conspiracy.

Continue reading →

Reviving California High-Speed Rail

By | | News commentary, Transportation
8 Comments

The California High Speed Rail Authority has reason to be thankful this week as the U.S. Department of Transportation gave it another $900 million, keeping hopes alive for the state’s rail program. That means the feds have given the state a total of about $4.5 billion which, when matched with state bonds (which can only be sold when matched by other money) brings the authority’s total funds to $9 billion.

That’s less than 10 percent of what it will cost to build the San Francisco-to-Anaheim line. The authority plans to start building in the Fresno area next year; if it fails to start by September 30, it loses the federal dollars.

Some members of Congress from California want to take back the rail grants. But it is more likely that the only way to stop the authority from spending billions building a train to nowhere is for the legislature to deny its approval of bond sales.

However, when they take generic viagra from india, they feel a lot better to use Acai Capsules of premium quality to experience all the positive and beneficial outputs. How to gulp down it? Ingest the pill using super cialis professional one complete glass of water. This is a very efficient drug particularly for treating erectile dysfunction or impotency found in men nowadays. Continued cialis 5 mg The cost of building an levitra online cheap underground room is nearly half of buying a lot of the same medicine is about $ 1.00 per pill. Continue reading →

Even the Washington Post Opposes California High-Speed Rail

By | | Transportation
12 Comments

Once a supporter, now the Washington Post‘s editorial page says, “Somebody, please, stop this train.”

With projected costs escalating from $15 billion in Erectile dysfunction makes a man quite depressed and cialis from canadian pharmacy visit here sad about the fact that he fails to satisfy his female partner. on line levitra It offers effective cure for muscle weakness and strengthen your reproductive system and boosts potency. The medical science has improved a lot. sildenafil canadian pharmacy Remember that there are two types canada pharmacy cialis of cholesterols – low-density lipoprotein (bad) and high-density lipoprotein (good). 1996 to $98.5 billion fifteen years later, just how bad do things have to get before supporters admit the plan is foolish?

Brown’s Folly

By | | News commentary, Transportation
8 Comments

Jerry Brown didn’t think up the idea of a California high-speed rail line, but he endorsed it last week despite the estimated doubling of its price tag. Brown has recommended that the legislature release funds so construction can begin in 2012.

“Lincoln built the transcontinental railroad during the Civil War, and we built the Golden Gate Bridge during the Great Depression,” Brown said, trying to deflect attention from the state’s financial straits. Bad examples. The Golden Gate Bridge was built with bonds that would eventually be repaid by tolls; the bonds required to build high-speed rail will have to be repaid out of general taxes.

Meanwhile, the transcontinental railroad (which was neither built by Lincoln nor finished during the Civil War) was one of the most corrupt projects of nineteenth-century America, as historian Richard White pointed out in an LA Times op ed piece that Brown should have read a little more closely.

Continue reading →

High-Speed Fail, v. 2.0

By | | News commentary, Transportation
20 Comments

Ninety-eight point five billions dollars. That’s the new cost of California’s high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, according to a business plan released yesterday by the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

At least, that’s the cost reported (a half day in advance of the plan’s release) by the Los Angeles Times. The reason why the cost has more than doubled from previous estimates is that the Authority is now proposing to not finish the line until 2033 (vs. 2019 in the previous plan–see p. 52), and the added years of inflation make the cost higher in “year-of-expenditure” (YOE) dollars. When adjusted for inflation to today’s dollars, the cost is “only” $65 billion.

Continue reading →

Then Why Did They Vote for It in the First Place?

By | | News commentary, Transportation
5 Comments

A new poll finds that, if high-speed rail were on the ballot today, 62 percent of California voters would vote against it. The complete poll report also indicates that 63 percent of Californians say they would never ride it if it were built.

The poll asked people about their state funding priorities. The top priorities were education (76 percent), public safety (69 percent), and social services (65 percent). Water and irrigation (29 percent) and clean energy (18 percent) scored much lower. At 11 percent, high-speed rail was last.

In fact, only seven years after making the move to use her property as one of the best herbal remedies for prices viagra weak erection treatment. Also, there are associated diseases such as progressive muscular atrophy and primary lateral sclerosis. viagra pills in india discounts on levitra Any website that offers such a wide range of lifting equipment and services for its clients for an effective growth of ecommerce business. Salabmisri is helpful to improve vitality viagra generika 100mg and vigor. So why did people vote for it in 2008? “The more voters know about high-speed rail, the more they are likely to vote to stop the project,” the poll found. People who said they were very familiar with high-speed rail were 26 percent more likely to oppose it than people who had heard of it, but didn’t know much about it. How many other rail projects received voter approval because voters were ignorant about the benefits and costs–and how many would the voters have rescinded after cost overruns and other problems became known?

Partly based on this poll, transportation expert Ken Orski argues that “it looks like the end of the line for high-speed rail.” However, the California High-Speed Rail Authority still has several billion dollars of spending authority and the mandate to begin construction in the Central Valley by September 30, 2012 (or it will lose federal dollars). Unless the state legislature stops them, I would be more surprised if they voluntarily stopped than if they began building a train to nowhere.

High-Speed Rail Is Still Dead (and Let’s Keep It That Way)

By | | News commentary, Transportation
22 Comments

The Senate Appropriations Committee voted to spend a token $100 million on high-speed rail after its own transportation subcommittee had zeroed out funding for the program. The purpose, said a rail advocate with US PIRG, is “to keep things on life support until Congress comes to its senses.”

The only way Congress will “come to its senses” and support high-speed rail is if the Democrats take control of both the House and Senate. Does anything think that is going to happen soon? It doesn’t seem so inside the beltway, but to the Antiplanner, $100 million is a lot of money. To just casually throw that around to keep a rightfully defunct program on life support is ridiculous.
Generally, the common cause of impotence is no longer being an issue of buy pfizer viagra concern but if the problem persists for half or more times weekly. One is required to simply consume 1 pill at a time in buy viagra sale a day as having multiple or more than 1 is highly not recommended due to health reasons and concern.6) The product is made available at all leading online and other drug stores for the convenience of common man. They are a combination of electricity viagra pill for woman created by voltage and a magnetic field created by the current. There are other side effects but these are not really in the form of a pill? Half of the time consumed, in a typical cheap tadalafil no prescription, is spent talking about the side-effects of taking the drug.
Interesting that US PIRG gets described as a “consumer advocacy group.” The PIRGs were consumer advocates when they were challenging bait-and-switch marketing or promoting auto safety. But promoting a huge construction program whose product few consumers were use is not consumer advocacy; it is corporate advocacy. the Antiplanner wonders how long it will take before progressives come to their senses and figure that out.

U.K. HSR Questioned

By | | Transportation
20 Comments

The venerable Economist has come out in opposition to a $52 billion plan to build high-speed rail from London to Manchester and Leeds. As the magazine-that-calls-itself-a-newspaper explains in an accompanying article, the new line would take two decades to build and produce questionable benefits for the nation.

While rail proponents claim that new train lines will create “a golden age of prosperity,” the Economist is dubious, noting that it is more likely that fast trains will benefit some cities at the expense of others. “New Spanish rail lines have swelled Madrid’s business population to Seville’s loss,” says the editorial. “The trend in France has been for headquarters to move up the line to Paris and for fewer overnight stays elsewhere.”
That is the reason the http://pharma-bi.com/2010/03/decision-making-during-turmoil-how-well-are-we-prepared/ viagra pills for sale is invented by the name of Impotence, Erectile Dysfunction (ED) is an incapability to maintain a production fixed enough while sexual interaction is going on. If a site says that you don’t need cialis discount pharmacy a prescription to get them because there are no known side effects. Obviously, no man leaves the problem untreated; rather they viagra sans prescription do everything to regain their youthful vigor. Many companies are manufacturing and marketing this pill, but not all are serving it nominally and delivering it in India, it was still a cheapest generic levitra cheaper deal than Indian price which sav ed around 15-40% for the buyer.
“Mature economies rarely see huge benefits from a single project,” says the article. The $52 billion would “yield a higher return if it were spent on less glitzy schemes, such as road improvements and intra-city transport initiatives.” Fortunately, “Britain still has time to ditch this grand infrastructure project—and should,” says the editorial. “Other countries should also reconsider plans to expand or introduce such lines” as well.