California expresses its preference. My thoughts on XCOR’s Texas move, over at PJMedia.
14 thoughts on “Trains To Nowhere Over Rocket Ships”
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California expresses its preference. My thoughts on XCOR’s Texas move, over at PJMedia.
Comments are closed.
The solution is obvious: an Exit Tax on corporations leaving the state.
Glad to have them here, but we must confess to a bit of stupidity in Texas where trains are concerned. Our lovely leadership in Houston, (which is consistently Democrat and liberal, due to the way they’ve gerrymandered the voting boundaries), has spent a billion dollars building the “Toonerville Trolley,” which runs about five miles from downtown to the Texas Medical Center. It serves two purposes: 1) Obstruct traffic downtown; 2) Hit cars driven by people who are unaware that there’s an empty train running down the middle of Main Street.
But trains are the future! Just ask anyone (who sells trains).
Titus! Shut the hell up! I plan to get outta this state eventually. And you know they’ll place it on individuals too.
I understand that it’s often impossible to distinguish Leftist policy from satire, but this has already been tried. I’m just a historian.
Not just an exit tax. If you’ve ever done any business in CA they will tax you as if you are still in CA. They don’t need no stinkin’ reason.
If not, they just get every other state to pay for the fed bailout about once a decade.
I’ve heard horror stories from former Californians about having to prove every year to the FTB they simply don’t live here anymore. If you or I did that, it would be criminal harassment.
The county here in northern AZ does something like that every year to homeowners as well (prove you aren’t renting out your house.) People learn to ignore the letters. They’re just hoping to scare some.
I was kidding.
Sorta.
I wish I was…
You know what the best part about this HSR boondoggle is? The train advocates don’t even understand which market they are competing with. China built its high speed rail; the only effect it had was to lower the number of airline tickets sold between the destination cities. Didn’t do anything for car traffic.
Maybe I’ve been listening to different propaganda, but most of the comments I see in favor of HSR are about how it will move people from icky expensive polluting airplanes to nice cheap clean trains.
The only reason the trains appear “clean” is that the electricity is produced elsewhere, in coal-fired power plants. People can see their car or jet exhaust, but not the smoke from the power plant.
Pretty much regardless of where the fuel comes from, trains should be cleaner than airplanes. Wikipedia gives trains at about 3X the passenger mile/MJ over airplanes.
On the other hand, the chart at http://www.businesspundit.com/why-high-speed-rail-isnt-that-great/ isn’t nearly as good–maybe only 20% better (eyeballing). Rail presumably does so poorly because a number of passenger trains are run nearly empty. Given that the HSR will be run by the government (so its schedule may not track demand all that well) and that it’s going to use more energy than the average train that went into the table, there’s a fair chance that HSR could be less energy efficient than air travel. That’d be a hoot.
Sorry, I didn’t rewrite enough. The chart that I pointed to isn’t nearly as optimistic as WIkipedia’s figures, showing rail to be only somewhat (maybe 20%) more efficient than air travel.