Lisa Benson for January 26, 2013

I’m assuming it’s our governors “train to nowhere,” the absolutely biggest boondoggle California has come up with for years. Already it is costing millions in interest payments on bonds that will barely launch construction on this high speed rail project that Californian’s don’t want and likely wont use. Our governor Moonbeam is obsessed with this project, in spite of escalating cost estimates, lawsuits, problems with environmentalists etc. *http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/304974/train-nowhere-full-speed-ahead-john-fund*http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-01-09/opinions/35439370_1_high-speed-rail-immense-financial-risk-peer-review-group

Libs Gone Wild in Cali. The highest taxes in the nation and yet the Dems who run things there still say they need more for their corrupt “projects”.

Why do Americans hate trains so much? Because they save the public money and minimise pollution?It seems like a big proportion of you folks hate anything that has to be provided by a central authority, even if it is good for one and all.I gave up my car a few years ago because the local train service is all I need, seven days a week. I hire a car on holidays.I laugh at fuel prices and read on the way to work or listen to podcasts without distraction.(OK, I admit the Porsche 928 was nice before the divorce …)

It is a real pity that after WW2 it was decided that paving the country, making the railroads help pay for it and then regulating them into bankruptcy was the way to go. Maybe we should make all highways toll roads and make the airlines pay for terminals and ground crews. High speed rail in this country probably will never work but if the playing field was more level we could develop better commuter and distance rail systems.

That’s too bad the trucking industry is keeping the transportation of people back.-How much of the cost is the acquisition of the land needed to build the rails & stations? Won’t the cost rise as the planners run into the typical NIMBYs and narrow minded?

Well it appears many of you want to continue using tax money to build more and bigger highways as that form of government intrusion is okay. High speed rail a few parking lots, a few buses and you can have a great system like Santa Fe/Albuquerque does. People fought it and now embrace its utility.

The only way to grow a proper city, it takes money, dont’cha know.

Even in super liberal California, over 60% of the people are now against this huge waste of money. The Governments estimates are over 80 Bill. and we know what happens with government estimates once they become reality.

What’s also an example of Big Gov gone wild is that Gov Brown just begged and pleaded with the citizens to raise their already high taxes even more or else the whole education system would collapse!

Yet they want to build a bullet train through the least populated parts of the state, meanwhile their freeways in the cities are some of the worst in the world.

Perfect example of what happens when Democrats have absolute power with no checks and balances.

Well, rvernon, are YOU going to pay for the high speed rail? And, after YOU pay for it, are YOU going to ride it?

Didn’t you notice? It goes from nowhere to nowhere!

Sigh …

Traveling by rail in Europe is a pleasure.

I would bet the house you aren’t going to pay for any of it. Also, people commute from LA to San Fran as often as people commute from Dallas to Chicago. That’s what planes are for or you move. Spending a 100 Bill for MAYBE 1% of the pop to have a train when the state can’t even pay for its schools is moronic.

rvernon says: yes I AM going to pay for it….*This 1/2 inch of one rail sponsored by rvernon! Unless of course he is a 1%er.

rvernon said, “There isn’t ANY form of progress Baggers don’t despise.”

Liberals’ idea of “progress” is taking more and more money from tax payers and throwing it into corrupt and wasteful bureaucracies, which accomplish little good, but do provide millions of lazy parasitic drones a great salary and luxury benefits.

Nor does any other reasonable human being. But then we seem to have a great deal of the more unreasonable kind on these boards.

By the way, I am neither a liberal nor a conservative. What I am is basically a left over technological hippy from the decade of great dreams of the 1960’s. You know, the decade where we had people (both liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats) that not only dreamed big, but also actually acted upon those dreams!

I do not say that we no longer have such people, as out at the Mojave Airport in California they still exist. Now, they are the power behind private aerospace (particularly the space part). Such people as Elon Musk, Burt Rutan, Paul Allen, and others are building the future for humanity in space. Of course, the only reason they can even reasonably do this is because of the truly great past (and even now) efforts of NASA.

I am also extremely anti war. We had the greatest space program of all during the 1960’s with Werner Von Braun and NASA, and we tossed it all away for a war that should never have been (sound familiar to Iraq and such?). A war in Southeastern Asia that we lost resoundingly. A war with a country (Viet Nahm) that is now our best trading partner in that part of the world! We were incredibly stupid then, and we seem to be almost as stupid now. WAR is far and away the biggest waste of not only the US, but even of mankind itself!

If we spent anywhere near 10% of the wasted money we spend on a military that is larger than almost all of the other militaries of the world combined on our infrastructure and space program such as NASA, we would be so far ahead of the rest of the world that they would never catch up.

WWII was the last fully justifiable war the we fought, and Korea and the first Gulf were at least somewhat justifiable. But all of the others have been incredibly losing propositions. And yes, I blame both the Democrats and the Republicans for this!

The smallest return that I have seen for our investment in NASA is some 6 times the original investment all the way up to estimates of some 20 times. I would reasonably say the the true number is somewhat in the neighborhood of some 10 times. The entire electronic and digital age is basically a result of having to miniaturize space vehicles to reduce the launch weight of rockets!NASA is NOT and expense of the federal government, it IS an investment in both the future of this country and even the future of all mankind!!

So, I am neither Democrat nor Republican. I am a technocrat, that believes that if humanity does not get its butt out of the cradle of the Earth within the next one hundred years or so, then at the very least human civilization is doomed to complete failure, if not humanity itself (and even possibly all life) on this single spaceship earth!!

And it is only our environmental efforts that are even going to give us those hundred years or so at best. Now, is that understandable or not?

California is spending almost $20 billion on roads, EVERY YEAR! High speed rail has been successful in many places around the world. The costs of building HSR are too big for almost any corporate entity. Conservatives seem to forget that just about all of our existing infrastructure was built with public money.

“A Rabbit that got 40 miles per gallon…”-Holy crap! We had one of those VWs (thus the “crap” reference in my interjection)! It did get 40 mpg on the highway, but didn’t like to start on mornings when the temps were below 55F (thank goodness we lived on a hill), even with the dipstick block heater. Then there was the electical and cooling system problems. The size was also an issue for a family of 5, two of wich were in car seats, and two over 6 feet (tall, not wide). To this day, I’m certain people at church waited outside for us to arrive and wriggle free, clown-style, of our ’78. I was relieved when it finally blew a head gasket, prompting us to get rid of it in ’85.

“Why should people who don’t live near the rail lib(?) and would have to go of their way to even use subsidize it?”-For the same reason that we subsidize our roads and bridges: Because transportation is vital a nation’s economic health. You didn’t think that gas and tire taxes pay for road building and maintenance did you? They’re subsidized from the general fund the same way that existing and proposed rail are/would be.- What did you mean by “rail lib”. Was that a typo, or are you striving to start a new epithet?

“Yeah.. why pay for schools if you don’t have childern? Why pay for Highways you never drive on? Why Pay for anything that is for the greater good? (I do not understand this kind of thinking)”-The thinking you cannot understand is ‘cheapness’, it’s a manifestation of ‘greed’. The idea is that you hold onto money, so you have more of it. It has no basis in logic or reason, just an emotional attatchment to hanging onto money at all costs. It’s irrationality causes it’s bearer to ignore the fact that investing some of those bucks, wisely, results in getting more at a later date, often indirectly. No, the greedy/cheap suffers with blinders on, unable to delay gratification for a greater, and more meaningful gain. Their affliction is imposed on the rest of the society they are a part of (ironically enjoying the benefits of while resisting participating in), causing us to suffer the same ill effects as them. It can’t be explained to them, cannot be educated away: Cheapness is a disease, and those infected with it, deny having it. -I’ve seen this disease at work in all aspects of life. I’ve seen it in business, government, religion, and on individual basis. I’d welcome ideas as to how to combat it’s scourge.

Trains are some 500 times more fuel efficient than trucks, and even more so than airplanes. Amtrak got slowed mostly because railroad corporations hadn’t maintained track, for decades. Now those railroads are mostly oil companies, living off the resources they got for free in railroad grants to build AND MAINTAIN those rail lines, in perpetuity. They didn’t do it.

Amtrak also saw passenger trains pulled to sidings so those freight haulers who didn’t do maintenance could go past them, that’s why service was slow.

I road “bullet trains” in Japan in 1967, we’re way behind, and yes, trains are a lot faster than short runs in airplanes, like LA to Sacramento when you consider just the hours early you have to show up for TSA, that takes longer than the flight.

As usual, Benson joins the “tinfoil hat brigade” to hide from reality.

I like rail. I liked it in Europe. I don’t enjoy flying. It was great in the 60’s, but now…it’s a bus full of grumpy rude people that can’t pull off of the road when it has problem. My daughter’s flights to her college took her to two cities, one of which required a transfer to another plane, and then the final flight to her location. Then she had to get a ride to school. It took me 11 hours to drive there, and I had a car when I arrived.The United States is a car based society. Our neighborhoods ring economic centers and the ability to have rail anywhere but above the streets, as in Chicago, or below the streets, as in much of NYC and DC, is impossible.I like traveling by train and I like what I’ve read about the value of moving people and cargo by train as opposed to car, truck, and bus. I have used rail to travel into Boston, around Atlanta, Chicago, and DC. However…Rail has a history of mismanagement, greed, & corruption especially since the gov’t as become more involved in its operations. Rail infrastructure is at high risk in many locations. What little I have heard of CA’s high speed rail plans gives me little hope this new plan will avoid the mistakes of the past, and has already shown a leaning towards ‘corruption’ in the way it is being forced on voters. I would be more supportive of the plan if it were being paid for by billionaires interested in moving passengers to locations where work is done, or money is spent. Private industry would be more likely to be responsible to my safety and efficiency concerns than our uneducated and unprincipled elected officials at the state and federal level.My point is simply this, if the gov’t does this, the cartoon will be accurate. We will be told the plan will cost X. And then the plan will cost X times the value of God only knows. And then companies who bid on the contracts will be found to have done the work poorly and additional costs will occur to correct the problems, And because the project is underway, we HAVE to keep going, or else what has already been paid is a waste. This is insane.Just as HSBC and other banks are too big to prosecute, even when they perform HIGH treason,projects like this are too big too stop, even when they should be. Therefore, it should not start. Until our legislators write the regulations and penalties that put the fear of consequences into the greedy who hope to take the money and run, projects like this need to remain in the private sector and provided by the “Job Providers” of which we’ve heard so much.The US gov’t did not build the railroads that connected east and west. They appropriated land for the people who did, and dislocated homes and property for Carnegie, Morgan, and others. But it was private industry that built the rails and ran them efficiently for decades.If, like the farmer in Ms. Benson’s cartoon, I lost good farm land for a train just to see it cost me more in taxes, I’d curse too.Rail is efficient, cost effective, and if passenger trains are given precedence over freight trains, Respectfully,C.

and the millions that voted no and DON’t want it (that doesn’t fit into your world view because you know what is best for all of us). I get that, but you are awfully touchy are you sure you aren’t a 1%er?

Yeah, I really feel sorry for all those poor Europeans that have a far higher standard of living then we (especially if you are either part of the middle class,or even worse, the working poor) have here in the US!

Of course, for those such as yourself (that are constantly bragging in one way or the other about how wealthy you are) in the top 1% economically, public transportation must really be a true horror. Imagine having to rub shoulders with the 99% that are not in your wealth class.

Oh, the horror, the horror of it all!!!

Every time I’ve been on the Rail Runner it has been well utilized by commuters. By the way, the system was still being expanded well after Richardson left office.

I do not actually have to go anywhere, as I can read In fact, my secondary major in college was English Literature, with my major being physics). It is a known fact that you can buy a monthly (I must admit to not knowing if the pass can be for a longer period) Eurail pass for a relatively reasonable sum, and then board any train in Europe and literally go anywhere not only on the continent, but now with the Chunnel under the English Channel, it is even possible to visit anywhere within the United Kingdom as well.

Just visited the Eurail site. Admittedly somewhat confusing, but it does not matter to me anyway as I doubt if I or my family will ever be wealthy enough to visit Europe anyway. I did notice that such passes can be for as long as three months. And a first class pass for that long is somewhat over $2,000 per each passenger, but you can go anywhere for that price in first class. And I have heard that the first class really IS first class.

Heck, if you are really wealthy, you can even travel on the most luxurious train in the world in the Orient Express! For instance, you can travel the Paris-Budapest-Bucharest-Istanbul route with a double occupancy for $19,900. And that is for 6 days and 5 nights (with 5 star hotels when you are not on the train itself).

By the way, I have also seen just about all of the Rick Steve’s Europe terrific videos. And I highly recommend them (especially if like me you are probably never going to be wealthy enough to go yourself).

And no, just in case you want to know, I do not envy the wealthy in general as I live and have lived a very fulfilling life!

Yes, I’ve always paid a fare, as did the many others that were on the train at the same time. I was glad to see the addition of the express train.

It’s local train commute, but, In Portland, Or, you can take light rail from Lloyd Center to downtown for free, and be a block from your destination, in 8 minutes. It’s free. (outside that area, the fees are still cheap.) Driving the same route the next day, to the same destination, took 40 minutes in traffic, cost gas, and cost 12 dollars to park, and had to walk FOUR blocks from the nearest parking garage!

High speed rail, major city to city, with light rail on arrival (or even old fashioned buses) would be both fuel AND time saving over taking regional airlines with TSA, parking, arranging transport at your destination, etc. It makes very good sense.

Quote1: “Suicide rates are higher in Europe.” Not according to WHO – http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide_rates/en/ Higher in some countries e.g. Sweden & Switzerland, lower in others e.g. UK and Spain.Quote2: “Gas has so many taxes on it people live their lives around using public transit.”Where I work in the Uk, only about 5% use public transport to get to work, the rest of us use cars. Where do you get your information?