…failure.
The Obama administration reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer changes his name to “Max Power” (he saw it on a hair dryer). He tells Bart that there are three ways to do something: the right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way. “What’s the Max Power way?” It’s like the wrong way, but faster.
But you meet such interesting people on the train!
^^^ Momma’s so fat, her middle name is “Dayum!“
The kicker for me was this: that the train was “intended… to show that the U.S. can build rail networks as sophisticated as those in Europe and Asia.” We need to get every single person who is obsessed with being “as sophisticated as those in Europe and Asia” out of positions of power before they status-anxiety the country into bankruptcy. Listen, my Eurasio-philes: if you like foreign places so much, why don’t you emigrate to them?
Titus, are you referring to the woman in the “interesting people” article? I don’t think she’s *that* big (but then, I don’t dig the ultra-thin look, so your mileage may vary). But if the accounts are right – 16 hours? Is that a Guinness record? It would certainly be enough to make one wish for a portable direction-specific EMP generator.
Bob, I’m not saying she’s Fat Albert, but she is definitely once, twice, three times a lady. Are we sure that cell phone of her ain’t a communication satellite?
What strikes me about that article is that, having Massachussetts as a “test case” for mandatory health care, Congress went forward with Healthcare Reform anyway, so I’m not sure that the California debacle is any more likely to send a message that “this here plan don’t work” to Congresscritters than Massachussetts did.
Luckily, it’s a new Congress, but even with a Republican House, I’m not holding out a tremendous amount of hope that the message will sink in.
From the political perspective of a Democrat, high speed rail makes perfect sense. A lot of money gets channeled to states and redistributed to their politically connected fatcats, which in turn give money back to Democrats. What’s not to love?
Remember, beling liberal means never having to say you’re sorry or admit you were ever wrong (about anything). Any failure of any program can be blamed on insufficient funding, not that the idea was completely and utterly stupid on all levels.
Kind of funny watching the democrats go apeshit when the proposed high-speed rail lines are routed near their homes. When I saw the no rail signs I thought at first that some California democrats were having an unprecedented attack of sanity, but it was just NAMBYism.
Oops. NIMBYism. Trust me to make a typo in caps.
Andrea,
I’ve got a friend who told me WE should have high speed trains BECAUSE the Chinese have high speed trains. (he’s big on light rail too) It’s the ‘new’ space program he says, so we HAVE TO compete. So I asked him some simple questions.
“Charlie, are the Chinese using the high speed train to rush food to their starving people? Or are the trains just where the people HAVE food? Could they have FED the starving people for the cost of the train? Seriously Charlie, that’s the reason you told me we shouldn’t have a space program…starving poor people, If high speed trains are the ‘new’ space program, shouldn’t all the countries be feeding the poor FIRST? And, BTW, I thought you told me competition was wrong!”
He called ME a smug @$$hole, which I found highly ironic!
I thought you meant “NAMBLAism, which was even more puzzling…
Anyway, I ride a medium speed train three plus hours a day, every weekday. It is not all it’s cracked up to be, but I do it because: 1) Gas is $3.89 a gallon; 2). The federal government, for whom I work, currently picks up my entire monthly pass on the train; and 3) I can sleep for longer periods of time on the train than I can while driving. That said, if gas dropped back to $1.89 and the fed subsidy went away, I’d drive. I can make the drive in half the time, the difference going into sleep in an actual bed. Still more expensive, but at that point worth it.
Yep, NAMBLAism would be pretty bizarre. There might be some way to make NAMBLAism work in that sentence, but I don’t really want to try to figure out how.
We need to get every single person who is obsessed with being “as sophisticated as those in Europe and Asia” out of positions of power before they status-anxiety the country into bankruptcy.
I think a big cause of the current mess in the US and elsewhere is the people who can tilt at frivolous windmills or spin the roulette wheel with vast amounts of other peoples’ money. If you had a solid business case for high speed rail, you could easily get it funded. If you had a weak business case, but good presentation, a number of interested (to the point of donating money) parties, and the cost weren’t too high to lay the rail, you might be it with a non-profit. But cheap, empty sound bites are good enough for public funding.
And I find it interesting that they ignore the lessons of China. Do we really need to squander our wealth and future on ego-puffing nonsense? China does it, so it has to be a good idea, right?
Schtumpy: that’s a friend?
A few years from now, when the price effects of Peak Oil are fully in place and commuter airlines are no longer affordable, the CA HSR system will be an enormous asset for that state. These systems are always easy to deride when they are proposed and built. Over time, they become essential. We subsidize our current transportation choices and we cannot afford to do that any longer.
Cost comparisons that ignore the enormous hidden subsidies of our current transportation modes could lead us into more bad decisions, similar to many others the past three decades.
Hidden subsidies of road: the huge loss of tax revenue from other uses of all that land. Plus, a large portion of the US military budget, which goes to protecting the oil import sea routes. Plus, the many public and private costs of acid rain and other coal-induced pollution, which are not properly charged back to the operators of the coal-burning plants.
We privatize profits and socialize costs all the time. So why can’t we do that with a sensible new mode of transportation?
Doubleplus good duckspeak, Kevin!
“If you had a solid business case for high speed rail, you could easily get it funded. ”
BAWAHAHAHAAHAAAA!!!!
I needed that!
Show me an investor who’s interested in investing in a multi-generational capital project REGARDLESS of the potential return over the life of the project and I’ll show you this lovely bridge in central London that Boris Johnson assures me is for sale.
Most current investment funds/pools/whatever are looking for 5 year returns. Just building a modern rail (or road for that matter) network in the US will take significantly longer than that.
Show me an investor who’s interested in investing in a multi-generational capital project
Daveon, high speed rail isn’t a multi-generational capital project. If you don’t quickly get a return on it, then you’re doing something wrong. In fact, turning a project like a rail system into a multi-generational capital project is just a way to evade accountability for misuse of the funds.
Now, let’s glance over Kevin Greene’s post.
A few years from now, when the price effects of Peak Oil are fully in place and commuter airlines are no longer affordable, the CA HSR system will be an enormous asset for that state.
If oil is that expensive, then it probably means that society broke down and couldn’t maintain a high speed rail. Current evidence indicates that we still have vast supplies of oil and oil alternatives. As oil prices increase, these other sources become viable.
These systems are always easy to deride when they are proposed and built. Over time, they become essential.
Being needed is a very low threshold. Just because some riders change their behavior when they ride a high speed train doesn’t mean that the train is generating value. Remember it costs money to maintain as well as the massive initial development and construction costs.
Hidden subsidies of road: the huge loss of tax revenue from other uses of all that land.
Not a subsidy, an opportunity cost. You also ignore that the property adjacent to the road system increases greatly in value as a result. High speed rail isn’t going to spur the widespread, diffuse increase in property values that a prevalent road system generates.
We privatize profits and socialize costs all the time. So why can’t we do that with a sensible new mode of transportation?
Because that’s a dumb mode of operation. And I’m not the one getting the sugar.
Daveon and Kevin both make the same error of claiming that we should build rail systems now for some distant hypothetical future where these systems will become needed. Even if they were right, you still have the fact that you can build the system later when it is needed rather than now when it is not needed. This is particularly useful when (not if!) the future turns out different than you expected.
My view is that the road system works, that the US is generating massive economic value for itself and the rest of the world, and that there’s no compelling need to build a redundant system that few people will use. When future circumstances change so that some other transportation mode becomes more useful than cars and airplanes, then the much wealthier US will be able to take better advantage of it.