I am always astonished when reading various snippets in Trains Magazine about how great California is with regards to Amtrak, commuter rail, light rail and other transit projects, without ever mentioning the state of the giant budget mess.
The budget deficit has gone from $8 billion, to $12 billion, to now $20 billion with an expectation of a handout from President Obama. (Bet the readers in the other 49 States love to read that!) Every year they paper over the deficit with fake accounting, pushing whatever they can into the next year hoping for a miraculous recovery, enact end-around tax hikes illegally…
My favorite is the bullet train that goes from Anaheim to Las Vegas. Huh? Literally two downtowns filled with empty brand new housing units overbuilt during the housing speculation…albeit LV is far larger than Anaheim.
from the LA Times on Friday:
One of the proposed budget’s biggest losers is public transit – and its riders. Through a complex gas tax swap, which would simultaneously eliminate the sales tax on gas and raise the per-gallon excise tax, roughly $1 billion would be siphoned off from bus and rail funds.
The shift would gut Proposition 42, a voter-approved measure that determines how gas tax money is currently split. Mass transit, which now receives 20% of the taxes, would be cut out of the equation. Drivers would pay slightly less at the pump.
Kind of misleading. If you consider the train would serve the metro areas of Las Vegas (1.8 mil) and Los Angeles which includes Anaheim (12.9 mil.) populations, then it would hardly be a train to nowhere.
It is sorta I suspect. But then if one comes into a city and sees a “donut syndrome” that has all kinds of un sold/rented housing around the station I’d be wondering-----A few years ago that was what we had here. A 40% vacancy rate for stores downtown—and hardly any downtown living–that does paint a dreary image
We here in London just seen a 24 storey apartment/condo building go up a block away from the VIA station up here—just opened a month or two ago–90% rented/sold. Part 2 coming up–already 50% rented/sold. Just three months ago 11.5% unemployed—as of today 9%.
Fast recovery!! A lot of suburban commuter towns (Wheaton, Glen Ellyn, Naperville) around Chicago are/have already revitalized their downtowns, usually by starting with condos and townhouses. That leads to more stores and restaurants - and some jobs as well…
Basically that is what happened here as well. We also have two private schools established downtown as well as two extension campuses – one being the University of Western Ontario and the other being Fanshawe College. These were also joined by a couple of large corporations setting up here and the John Labatt Center—home of our London Knights OHL team. It has been a slog but it can be done…
I can remember doing a LA-LV jog by car—and between those two places–I can see why there is a question about a passenger train run between those two. But then I’d push it anyways----somethings gotta work there–
Yep. Still doing the locomotives up here—maybe a little slower but then—BTW–the Toyota plant in Woodstock ON is getting/or has got—a spur going off of either CN or CP–not sure which–there was talk of summat awhile back
As for the institutions–well–it brings people into the downtown–which may have been what was more important [:-^]
-----as for the moose----can we go moose hunting now?[:-,][(-D]
Don’t I wish! The Desert Xpress (its official identification) is currently planned to run from Las Vegas (where the station would be among the casinos, nowhere near any residential areas) to - a park-and-ride station at Victorville! For this, the promoters expect to collect $100 a head one way, and expect to soften the impact (on riders’ wallets) by providing Casino perqs on the train.
Victorville is at the top of Cajon Pass. If I were an Angelino, after fighting my way across the LA basin and up combined I15/I40 in Cajon, I think that I’d just keep driving. The connector is a 70>75 mph freeway, not some goat trail, and saving an hour (maybe) wouldn’t make up for the convenience of having my own wheels in Las Vegas. That may explain why the Casino owners aren’t lining up, checkbooks in hand, to fund this (omitted.)
I don’t know whether tears or hysterical laughter is the more appropriate reaction - but I suspect it’s the former (for the money already wasted and to be wasted proving that this won’t work) and the latter (directed mainly at the local pol who seems to be hanging his hat on getting this built.)