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California governor: High speed rail can prevent ‘third world’ status
Moonbeam, Obama is trying to make this nation a third world country! That’s his top priority. He does not have any other objective than to reduce the country to the same status as the likes of Cuba, Albania,Sudan, Sierra Leone, Laos or Nepal. High speed rail is a delusional feint to distract us from Obama’s true goals for this country: Equality in poverty, like Cuba, and many other third world nations Obama admires, and wishes he could lead.
Thank you for the history lesson, Mr. Brown. I didn’t realize the government built the transcontinental!
CA is broke! What money is he going to use for this?
California needs to revise their HSR plan. For one most of the right of way will be shared with BNSF/UP, they need to find their own ROW; second their are way too many stops along the way. All they need is, SD to SF with LA as the only intermediate stop.
Mr. Benham, in the past I’ve been able to ignore your extreme right-wing rants because they usually have to do with the article, or at least with rail. This one is too much. It does not belong in this forum.
Mr. Grandzol, the government financed the trainscontinental, directly rather than by land grants as it did for many other railroads.
I see plenty of negative comments about California’s proposed HSR system, but the fact remains: the population is expected to increase substantially in the next twenty or thirty years, and most of those people are going to need to travel. The highways and airports are at or near capacity, and it is much more cost-effectve to build HSR than to build new roads and runways. It just makes sense. To pay for it, maybe they will need to (gasp!) raise taxes. So what? If you want something worthwhile, you need to pay for it. And can we leave nonsense about Albania and Sudan out of the discussion please?
Read most any account of the building of the transcontinental-I suggest “Empire Express” and it becomes apparent that the government did build it. Without the land grants and subsidies, it wouldn’t have happened nearly as quickly. The private companies did all they could to siphon off whatever they could for their own gain.
Gov must be talking about the French attempt at a Panama Canal
You all are missing the point. Believe it or not ALL of the funding to build the B & O from Baltimore to Wheeling was NOT in place before they started constuction! I dare say that all the funding to complete Interstate 70 from coast to coast was also not inplace when the first section was built!
Jerry Brown needs to crack a history book if he thinks that “Lincoln built the trancontinental railroad during the Civil War.” What a joke.
Mr. Oltmann makes sense.
It COULD be a lot less if a bit of common sense would prevail. There already is decent service from Bay Area to Bakersfield. What’s missing is Bakersfield to LA. Build that first. 220 mph alignment, provision for electrification. Run Bakersfield trains through to LA. 110 mph, diesel hauled.
Trip times Oakland to Bakersfield are 6 hrs for 315 miles. Extending to LA would add 110 miles and another 1-1/2 hours or so. It’s a 7 hr drive plus a meal stop, so travel time equivalent to highway.
Improve the rest of the route incrementally as business grows.
I’m surprised that Trains would spread the foolish vitreal of Mr. Benham -who has obviously not observed theongoings in this nation for some time.
The problem with criticizing Mr. Benham’s political tirade is that many of the comments regarding Congress’ actions on rail funding are also political tirades. To be fair, I guess I should note that Mr. Benham does remember Moonbeam’s first terms as Governor of California. Back then, we didn’t think he cracked history books; we thought he used it.
The best comment to this point is the idea that Bakersfield and L.A. should be tied together first. Riding the bus from Ontario up to Bakersfield to catch a San Joaquin is just like the Chessie kitten nursing from its mother. I don’t think I can use the shorter one word description here.
It would help our infastructure programs if we didn’t send billions of dollars overseas every year. Keep American tax dollars in the USA and let’s rebuild America !!! Build high-speed rail, rebuild our deficient bridges, expand passenger and commuter rail, etc.
It would help our infastructure programs if we didn’t send billions of dollars overseas every year. Keep American tax dollars in the USA and let’s rebuild America !!! Build high-speed rail, rebuild our deficient bridges, expand passenger and commuter rail, etc.
Peter Benham, Perhaps you are not aware that the GOP pushed us into the current financial situation! Maby you were asleap at the wheel during the Bush adminstration???
I think that we are missing the big picture. In what sense is it implied that the still largest economy in the world is on-track to becoming third-world? The United States alone has the largest economy with a GDP of $14.6 trillion in 2010 (up from $14.1 trillion in 2009) which is much more than the second largest - China - by $8.2 trillion. Even more still, the state of California has the largest GDP of all of the 50 states at $1.9 trillion as of 2010 making it the eighth largest economy in the world. So to suggest that the United States is on its way to becoming a third-world country is a total misnomer.
The point is, I trust that no matter what happens we as a people are going to be just fine, and everything should be just copacetic. Therefore, there is no need to belittle or demean others or a situation just because you think you are right. It is almost exhausting to come here to read all of the non-fact based negative comments and finger pointing that has become so prevalent in our own little community of rail enthusiasts. Being rail enthusiasts should be uniting us in a common interest, not forcing division.
Everyone is entitled to argue about an issue that perhaps makes them passionate; but could we at least try to speak kind words to each other and figure out for ourselves what is really fact and what is not, rather than base an argument completely upon ignorance and intolerance?
Ironically while Gov Moonbeam is proposing billions more for hsr & he has teamed up with seiu and Cal teachers association to push for highter taxes while refusing to cut spending.It is pure lies for anyone here to say that the Republicans under Bush put us into our current mess.Bush has not been in office for over 3 years now and had not added a single penny.Meanwhile during the same 3 year period the current occupant in the oval office has added 5 trillion to our national debt.