California High-Speed Rail: Later, Slower, and Way Over Budget

What a smug shitstain you are. A right thundercunt of the first order.

Clearly it's time for the "welfare queens" to take care of themselves alone and stop providing all that meat and produce to those festering nests of filthy entitled assholes who don't appreciate where their meals are coming from.

Oh, and that last paragraph is pure tyranny of the majority. And it's an ugly fucking attitude to share.

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That kind of evidence, yes. But again, look at Acela compared to an actual high-speed rail system . . . it's basically an up-engined Amtrak train running on the standard tracks that are already there. HSR, to be really high speed, needs a dedicated railway that's not being beaten into tinfoil by freight trains. An ideal HSR system would probably be a maglev of some type - little to no wear on the track at all! But an energy hog to say the least, and quite expensive to build. Rail is actually more efficient in terms of fuel burned per unit of cargo moved (whether the cargo is cans of spam or people in seats is irrelevant) than either air or road and would be a great people-mover for the continental US if you could get the speed on the mainline up around 300mph or so.

I completely agree with you that oil will not be running out. The price of oil will continue to keep going up and up though as the new oil finds tend to be expensive to get to market while we're running out of the old cheap to get to market oil. There won't be shortages but gas will get a lot more expensive especially since the growth in demand world wide keeps skyrocketing but supply is only going up incrementally. We should certainly drill every where we can domestically because it's stupid to leave that much money on the table or worse export it to other countries but it's going to steadily get harder and harder to pay for the 12 mpg 8 liter V8 truck which is only carrying one person in it.

I don't really like thinking about trains these days.

The DownEaster struck and killed one of my friends last month so it's hard to be positive about them right now.

That's a big claim there, twinkletits.

Yeah, yeah. Heard it before. We'll just pretend cities could exist without the products of rural areas or a place to put military bases. Nope. Only the manipulation of currency matters. Fucking smug, transparent bullshitter. Eat a dick.

You mean people who make real products, or investment bankers and insurance agents?

How about we pack the urban and rural areas in seperate little jars to find out which ones could actually survive on their own. Urban consumerist culture and the flow of currency are not the be-all, end-all of human civilization, you fucking asshammer.

A lot of cities have great downtowns especially now after 20 years of urban renewal.

...You have made me uneasy...

I've spent more time in downtown LA than your average Angelino, both for work and socializing. It's really block by block at this point. You can walk down a block full of hip new lofts, bars and restaurants; then you turn a corner and you're literally on Skid Row.

Hell, before they put in Staples Center it was all Skid Row. LA was a bit late on the whole downtown redevelopment bandwagon but it's without a doubt the west coast city who's downtown has the most potential. The only question is if the city has the money and vision to make it what it once was. That said, Seattle, Portland, San Diego, Vegas, Boston, and even places like Atlanta have great downtowns. Not to mention NYC which always was the urban center to beat.

L.A. Live is the kind of development I hate as it's pretty much sterile drive in, drive out without ever seeing anything else or interacting with anyone else sort of place but it was kind of a big step in downtown's redevelopment. It did turn some nasty parts of skidrow into a place yuppies drive in to visit even though everything closes early so the yuppies can flee back to the burps.

Sounds kind of like the 'Pacific Place' deal that got Nordstroms to take over the former Frederick & Nelson's building by agreeing to allow a mall (Pacific Place) to be built across the street, connecting it with a skybridge, and the city itself paying for the parking structure.

At the time downtown was struggling retail wise and it was seen as a needed move to keep it alive. However now there has been a complete 360 with companies competing to be down there. Nordstroms just put in an expanded Rack, Target is putting in a City Target, and JC Penny was going to put in a new smaller Penny until they changed CEOs. With Amazon announcing 10k new jobs going into the heart of DT, and 83% of the entire regions housing being built in the city, it's a retailers dream. Now the city is trying to figure out how to offload the parking structure and would never agree to anything of the kind.

360 means you're facing the same direction as when you started.

The high speed rail isn't supposed to go north of SF/Sacramento.

Having traveled between Northern California and Southern California by car, train, and airplane many, many times, I much prefer the train. Traveling by car takes too long, and everything between Patterson and the Grapevine looks like someone just used the Photoshop clone brush over the whole landscape. Traveling by airplane usually sucks if you're not traveling out of state or out of the country. The only downside of the train is that the train line stops in Bakersfield and you have to take a bus over the Grapevine into the greater LA area. The original high speed rail plan would have solved this issue and taken less time. It's pretty shitty that the high speed rail isn't working out.

This thread is interesting in two ways.

First UA has admitted that subsidies and regulations are A-Okay as long as it is his preferred lifestyle being subsidized and lifestyles he doesn't like being burdened down with excessive regulation.

Secondly he has admitted that the market can't be used to assign value. I'm sure that just like you can't use the dollar to assign value to rural areas he also believes you can't use that same dollar to assign value to say... artists. I look forward to reading his impassioned defense of the artists lifestyle choices and the necessity of state subsidies for said lifestyle.

Listen, bitchcakes, if you wanna go back in time and convince everyone to throw that money at a more extensive rail system instead of all the highways we've got, or better yet turn it into a bond issue where both options compete freely, be my guest.

And sure, I'll use the same method to assign value to artists. That is, they are worth whatever practical utility I get from their products.

A High Speed Rail system between Los Angeles and Las Vegas would've been a slam dunk.

A High Speed Rail system between Los Angeles and San Francisco? A novelty that would've appealed mainly to tourists.

Not at all. The amount of air traffic between LA (and SD) to the bay area makes it one of the busiest air corridors in the country. Seriously, there is a ton of traffic using that route but right now it's all air travel. Since it's a very busy route of moderate distance it is ideal for HSR but the key is to 1) build the thing as cheaply as possible without degrading quality (so no NIMBY subway tunnels costing tens of billions) and 2) to make sure it really is an LA to SF train without wasting endless amounts of time at little stops no one cares about. If you don't do #2 then the time spent will be longer than flying and no one will bother taking the HSR. It has to be, it must be if it is to be profitable, city center to city center.

Tacking on dozens of little stops which each take 5-10 minutes just wastes hours of transit time and slows the train down when it should be going 200mph+ right through no where land. That reminds me the tracks need to be kept straight, straight as an arrow, so max speed can be reached and maintained so no zigging and zagging and putting bends in the tracks so you can connect towns which aren't the main destinations. That's just the economic reality folks. Trying to connect those lines will slow everything down and make the whole project worthless.

Explain to me how it is unreasonable to:

1) Want a train you're paying for to stop in your town.

2) Want the fucking thing to run somewhere but directly through your back yard.

1) The cities net pay taxes and the rural areas don't so, no, they're not net paying for anything.

2) From a simple land rights point of view why should you get to say what someone else should get to do with their land especially since it's moving through rural areas with low population density and honestly it will make less noise than having a freeway near you.

3) Those nothing towns are already connected by Amtrak so if they want to ride HSR they can take Amtrak to one of the major cities and then ride HSR. Once again, HSR is not a commuter train which stops every where and instead is an express train going only to the big high traffic destinations.

Very true. There is already a freight line on that route so some sort of right of way deal could be worked out but with dedicated HSR tracks. The I15 on that route is packed, I mean packed, with cars making the trip not even counting the dozens of flights per day from SoCal to Vegas so HSR would work wonderfully provided it picked people up at a convinent location and dropped them off right in downtown Vegas.

That said, it would require a deal between California and Nevada since there is no reason for California to pay for it by itself so Nevada would have to kick in some cash as well.

Shut the fuck up with this "everything connects to everything" shell game bullshit. You're basically arguing that rural areas should be grateful for any pittiance crumbs the urban centers see fit to toss their way because the areas designed around the movement of currency *gasp* have more currency. It's dishonest and contemptible to act like big cities carry and prop up the surrounding countryside when the city is the place that could never be self-reliant.

Not someone else's property, but I should sure as fuck get to say what happens on my property.

It's just a fact that the cities pay for the rural areas while the rural areas sell things like food to the cities because economically they have no other choice. In any event, yes, the cities subsidize the rural areas and that fact won't change so your argument that "I pay $0.20 and get $1.50 back so I should get veto over EVERYTHING" argument doesn't work. The rural areas are already getting plenty and this project only works if it is as fast as air travel so that means stopping a dozen times for 5-10 minutes per time can't be done; it simply must cover only the high traffic areas if it is to be viable.

BTW it wouldn't be your property, it would be the state HSR's property so by your own definition you shouldn't get a say on what they do so what's your objection again?

HSR between LA and Vegas would be GLORIOUS. Just the bar car alone!

It's also a fact that you have to consider exchanges of value other than money when evaluating who benefits more in that relationship. You trying to condescendingly marginalize it as the cities lowering themselves to accept the products of rural areas doesn't change the reality of it one bit. Money is useless if there is no food to buy, and that's just one example.

Then it is a dishonest mischaracterization to portray those objections as "not in my back yard."

Uncle Albert has always been a staunch defender of Labor Theory of Value.

How many times are you going to try and float the same bullshit argument? Am I saying the only way to establish value is sweaty work and material products? No. What I am doing is pointing out the fact that it's a dishonest bullshitter tactic to portray rural areas as leeching off of big cities by looking at the movement of tax money in a vaccuum without considering anything else.

Right. So you're a giant hyprocrite.

When it comes to wages THE ONLY consideration is what the man with the purse is willing to pay.

But when the same principle is applied in a area you personally hold dear, all of a sudden other things besides market value need to be taken into consideration.



Good thing I quit taking you seriously a long time ago. Still fun as a punching bag when the mood suits though.

Are you serious with this apples vs. anvils bullshit? That's really what you're going with?

Just so I've got this straight, you expect me to apply the same principles to the operational decisions of a private corporation as I do to the disposition of tax-funded utilities as it pertains to the interaction of urban and rural locations? And dispite the fact that they're completely different animals ruled by completely different considerations, if I'm not consistent between the two I'm a hypocrite?

Wow. Just wow. You're special. That arrogant smugness is totally justified.