Streamliner

Which problem are you talking about?

superswiss

In this context the transportation problem and the fact that cities and the nation as a whole are choking on their own traffic.

Streamliner

Well, I don’t think electric cars are the solution. Clean, efficient, safe mass transit is probably the best bet, but such projects are just about impossible to build these days. Look at the completely idiotic California High Speed Rail project. The whole thing has been a disaster from day one. Virtually each and every decision has ended up being litigated in court. Billions have been lost down the rabbit hole, with contractors & lawyers getting wealthy, while Californians have virtually nothing to show for it other than tons of paperwork. As I have said here before, the country needs a “Transportation Tsar,” similar to Robert Moses. There will be no lawsuits, no second guessing, the Tsar will make a decision, it will be final and that will be that. To serve the greater good, some folks will have to move their homes or businesses, but they will be fairly compensated. With no lawsuits allowed, there will be plenty of money to compensate land owners.

That’s what is needed. More than likely, it will never happen here.

superswiss

Agreed, electric cars are not the solution, but I disagree with you on the HSR project. A lot of FUD being spread on that one. Yes, it's a very challenging project given the sheer size the amount of land that needs to be appropriated. It's not easy. But I pretty much guarantee you that once it's done and we can travel between SF and LA nobody will remember what it took and California will have an edge over other states. I give you a parallel that played out the same way. The Shinkansen bullet train in Japan. The first high speed train ever. It had massive cost overruns and delays and the two engineers who spearheaded the project got dishonored over the overruns in typical Japanese fashion. This was early 1960s just saying. But then something happened. The project finished and it brought a boom to the Japanese economy. Suddenly business people could easily travel between the two major cities of Osaka and Tokyo. It was such a success that they officially restored the honor of the two engineers and celebrated them as visionaries. The people who kept pointing out the problems and arguing for dishonoring ended up being the dumb ones.

Dima

Japan accepts 300 immigrants per year, we got 3 mil in the last few years. They got money. Small country also, with huge population density so it's a profitable enterprise.
Europeans love their governments, But people who left europe for america from the very beginning, actually were trying to escape the government tyranny. They haven't escaped to have more government power.
By war way, I go to meetings with sr. executives in Europe, I never hear American accents, but over here it's the opposite: over 50% speak with a foreign accent, how come?

SW20S

I wouldn't say I enjoy spending time there, but I'm not afraid of it. Give yourself some experiences of your own to form your own opinions instead of just believing what you're told by others. When is the last time you rode a subway, for instance?

This "lawlessness" and "defunded police" diatribe you are being fed just really isn't reality. Subways are not full of rapists and murderers waiting to strike, you're not going to die if you go into a city...

superswiss

Again, you keep choosing to be part of the problem. We are talking about the HSR in California. CA is ~403k sq km and Japan is ~378k sq km. Come again with the size comparison? Yes, Japan has about three times the population of California. Mostly concentrated in the cities, but the rural areas are very sparsely populated between the mega cities. Have you ever been to Japan? I have many times and traveled on the Shinkansen. It runs mostly through sparsely populated rural areas. Naysayers have never advanced humanity. You are free to disagree with the HSR project, but unless you have a better proposal you are not helping.

Dima

No I haven't been to Japan, but do you understand that your California is Billions in debt and getting poorer by the day? And the illegals are still coming and taxpayers are leaving in droves and now you'll have to pay billions in reparations for something you had nothing to do with? and you expect them to build a high speed train!

superswiss

Getting tired of this argumentation. Yes, I'm aware. I'm also aware that California had historic budget surpluses over the last three years. You don't seem to understand the difference between capital investments and operating expenses. No state is gonna survive w/o investing in future infrastructure.

Dima

LOL. OK you're right enough, don't forget to post photos from that high speed train. Keep the windows closed though when you pass San Francisco,

superswiss

Well, first off it won't pass SF, it'll start in SF, but nice job. I know Ron DeSantis spent 20 minutes in SF and thinks we are all wading through poop here...LOL.

crabman

The rail China built in recent years has been very successful where ridership is adequate; they rather unfortunately built quite a few lines to nowhere and that's putting a lot of drag on the entire system but where they have the traffic, it's working well. It's probably a good comparison to what you might see in the US:. A line up down major sections on the coasts is likely to be boon. You can imagine other lesser corridors where highs speed rail would have riders. The idea that rail isn't profitable in the US is false, it's hugely profitable with shipping, it's just not profitable in the passenger segment. My belief is that could be changed if we had rail that was fast, timely, and efficient. It's just getting there from here that's hard.

I'm not sure how we got into governmental power creep when discussing an infrastructure project? I'm speaking only for myself but I get enough people taking maga-moron, liberal dem, and all that crap in the real world. I wouldn't complain if I didn't have to read it here.

Dima

Sorry, I was just trying to introduce some facts. CA is 32 B in debt and that number is expected to be over 70b very soon. Their credit rating is going down and borrowing costs are going up. They had to actually promise to cancel big projects including infrastructure ones and are expected to cut a lot more. CA will not be building anything in a near future. They come to us to restructure their debt and to come up with some tricks to hide what the situation there is really like. I do wish it was different as I like CA but those are the facts.

Wolfman

This was an off-topic thread getting yet more derailed. Time to close this down. We have other sections in this forum for this...

Please stop creating threads in this forum that have nothing to do with the W223. Thanks!