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Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

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Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#42
post #24
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based off our inability to build infrastructure? Boeing still builds a ton of airplanes in America. Tesla is founded and manufactured in America. In 20 years we've created the empires of iPhone, Google and Facebook. Wasn't CRISPR discovered in America as well?

I'm more referring to the dysfunction of our government and institutions. But in a democracy, dysfunctional government is a manifestation of dysfunction in the people.

> In a democracy, dysfunctional government is a manifestation of lack of virtue in the people.

I am happy such mentality shows up here.

Particularly, I am deeply concerned with American educational philosophy. It seems American schools emphasize skills dealing with people more than those for understanding the non-human objects in the world.

These skills, although are always claimed to advance the greater good, they all have the central value of being personal freedom and self-realization.

The history has proven that a society that share the common goals can advance forward. While those comprised with self-proclaimed leaders never really manage to unite any large nations.

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is it not optimal? its 1/3rd the travel time and $75 each way.

Flying is a lot more time spend on overhead.

Security overhead should be the same for high speed trains.

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#45
post #10

I feel like more international airports in SF and LA would be much more useful. More locations to touch-down in, less crowded airports. Getting from LA to SF is already quite easy travel wise - a 1 hr flight. It's getting to and from the airport and how crowded they are that's most annoying. More airports would help solve both of those.

There aren't a lot of good places to put them, at least in the Bay Area.

Both high speed trains and airports have the same problem, land rights. If it's solvable for trains it's far more easily solvable for airports.

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#47
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HSR is supposed to go from SF downtown to LA in 2h40m. You want to go from city center to city center including airport security in 53 minutes? The shortest SFO-LAX flight I see right now is 1h25m. Even if you made smaller, local, more efficient airports, I fail to see how you can hit 53 minutes while including commute time to the airport and clearing security.

> including commute time to the airport and clearing security. You have to include that for the rail too, obviously. Yes. You won't need to leave as much time for the train station as you do for the airport. Why? Because the airport services many more flights and is much more crowded. If we had more airports, it could become similar to a rail-station in terms of time needed at the station/airport. In terms of time th…

Of course the european model assumes business travel means rail is much closer to start and end destinations and transport is so reliable you need only arrive 5 mins beforehand. In California this doesnt apply as much, but its going to head more in that direction in the future.

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#48
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of your suggestions are further from San Francisco than SFO is...

It would still make SFO less crowded.

What part of SFO crowds makes SFLA slow? I've always sped through security in 15 minutes at any time of day. Surely there must be security clearance time data available somewhere.

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#49

Just curious..if China could help build it with half cost and half time, would CA accept? If not, why?

You might recall California has a long history of employing Chinese immigrants for railroad construction.

In modern times, the biggest obstacle to new train routes tends to be acquiring the right of way. You generally have to buy up all the property in the path, or compensate people, and deal with the politics/lawsuits that generates. There are a number of public documents about programs for the high speed rail project: http://www.hsr.ca.gov/Programs/private_property.html

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#50
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more referring to the dysfunction of our government and institutions. But in a democracy, dysfunctional government is a manifestation of dysfunction in the people.

> In a democracy, dysfunctional government is a manifestation of lack of virtue in the people Or...just a reflection of bona fide disagreements? I prefer a gridlocked government to one that rams its will over the minority. That might be termed "dysfunctional" by some, but not by me. Not every value system needs the state to be efficient all the time. Note that the California High-Speed Rail project has never been app…

I don't really care if we build something or not in California. I'm more concerned about the fact that we've lost the basic consensus and cultural cohesion necessary to have a functioning civilization. Our inability to agree on anything leads us to "worst of both worlds" solutions.
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