Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
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Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#2Imagination: Another ~3,800 words worth of "opinion".
Reality: Zero miles of high-speed rail deployed.
Many such cases.
Edit: Downvote all you want, that still won't make the rails appear, lmao.
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#3Imagination: Another ~3,800 words worth of "opinion". Reality: Zero miles of high-speed rail deployed. Many such cases. Edit: Downvote all you want, that still won't make the rails appear, lmao.
As the piece points out, the lack of rail is pretty much irrelevant. Once all the guideways are in place, there is a machine that you just drive along that poops out perfect rails at ~1km/hr. It is the most trivial part of the project.
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#4There are some really good details in the article. But, to quote:
> Despite more than a decade of predictions of its failure, the project has persevered — even if its completion is in limbo.
I'm not sure that's much of an endorsement.
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#5Does anyone know how Florida’s Miami–Orlando Brightline is doing? I believe that’s the only higher-speed rail route opened since Acela.
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#6It won't be killed. Too much grift.
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#7The problem with local infrastructure projects is their responsibility and execution fall to local community leaders (in this case local = state of California). These leaders are far less efficient and impactful than the federal government, a bar which is already way too low. Nearly every city in the US has had recent collisions with corruption, blatant mismanagement, ideological forces co-opting process, etc. and so most local infrastructure projects are doomed from the start.
The problem with high speed rail, then, is that it is always going to be a local (=state) infrastructure project. America is far, far, far too large for high speed rail to be feasible at a national level, and so we have invested in airports. This is largely a success; much of the year you can travel from NYC to Miami (~1200 mi, roughly UK -> Spain) for $100-200 in a few hours. There are, of course, many issues with air travel that we are still working on, but unless there is a breakthrough to make supersonic land travel affordable, we are stuck with air travel at a national level.
But where do we go from here? We know the federal process is too bloated to succeed with infrastructure projects, and when it is forced to it ends up being prohibitively expensive. We know the state process is doomed to fail and similarly be very expensive. We have already tried privatizing it and failed, and even when subsidizing private industry we get subpar results at best. What options are even left at this point?
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#8Imagination: Another ~3,800 words worth of "opinion". Reality: Zero miles of high-speed rail deployed. Many such cases. Edit: Downvote all you want, that still won't make the rails appear, lmao.
As the piece points out, the lack of rail is pretty much irrelevant. Once all the guideways are in place, there is a machine that you just drive along that poops out perfect rails at ~1km/hr. It is the most trivial part of the project.
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Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#9The problem with local infrastructure projects is their responsibility and execution fall to local community leaders (in this case local = state of California). These leaders are far less efficient and impactful than the federal government, a bar which is already way too low. Nearly every city in the US has had recent collisions with corruption, blatant mismanagement, ideological forces co-opting process, etc. and so…
> What options are even left at this point?
Look at countries that do have high speed rail, which are of similar size to US states, and study what they are doing differently?
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#10[flagged]