Today, another article appears in the Imperial Valley Press regarding the $800K study of the feasibility of a high-speed rail link between San Diego and Imperial County following the Interstate 8 right-of-way.
A little background on this: this has been coupled with the continuing search by SANDAG (San Diego Association of Governments, a regional government agency) for a location suitable for a new airport, since Lindbergh field may be maxed out in capacity in 15 years. One of the possibilities floating around is to locate the regional airport in western Imperial County, about 80 or so miles east as the crow flies from downtown San Diego. The pipe dream is, of course, that high speed rail would whisk passengers from this airport to San Diego in 20-30 minutes.
So, you and I have contributed through our Congress the better part of a million bucks to study how high speed rail could be built along a right-of-way that features a 20-mile segment with a 3.1 percent average grade, a ten mile segment with a 2.9 percent average grade and a 10-mile segment with a 4.4 percent average grade.
I think I can give them a cheaper answer than what they have contracted for, something like, “Are you out of your freaking minds?” coming near the top of the list.
The good news is that serious complications have come up with the Imperial County location that will probably scuttle that possibility. If they really want to spend money on high-speed rail, they would be a lot better off spending it to link LAX and San Diego, IMHO. If they did that, they would kill two birds with one stone, first getting a lot of the puddle-jumper commuter traffic out of the airport and second, reducing the need to fly into San Diego at all. Of course, that just makes too much sense.
Sorry, time to get back down off of the [soapbox].
At least it’s not as bad as the Vegas one… First they wanted tax payers to pay for one that would go from L.A. to Vegas. Then it got even worse when they gave up on that, and just wanted one to go from Vegas to casinos on the NV/CA border… That way people visiting vegas would have an easy way to get to the casinos and stores on the border, and blow their kids college money there too… All paid for by the tax payers.
Oh boy…here’s a topic that gets me a tad irritated…San Diego and the airport search…“hey let’s just take Miramar from the Marines”. Never have I watched such a selfish, childish and un-informed spectacle.
The four year $286 BILLION federal transportation authorization bill (FY2006-2009) is known as the Safe, Accountable, Flexible and Efficient Transportation Equity Act or SAFETEA. This is basicly the planned expenditure of the taxes paid into the Highway Trust Fund. While most of the money is allocated to the various states and left for them to decide on specific highway (or transit) projects there are 6,380 specific projects in the bill for expenditures totaling $24.1 billion. Congresmen call these “earmarks”, critics call them “pork”. Take your pick.
I suspect that if there was a ready access to an easy to read summary of the projects, the forum would have a topic running far longer than the “coffee shop” and just as bitter as GE vs. EMD.
On the other hand, if she was still with us, Roseann Roseanna Dana would probably ask, “What is all this fuss about Safe Tea?” Nevermind!
What Dan doesn’t mention, beyond Miramar, is the rash of other bad ideas these bozos are coming up with.
We could both list a bunch of them, for sure, but so long as they have money (ours) to burn, they will keep coming up with ludicrous ideas to spend money studying.
I’d say they were stuck on stupid, but it would be unfair to stupid people everywhere.
Unfortunately, the silliness isn’t limited to down there… They just finished the lovely express buss-way near me in L.A., that goes through the valley… Which happened to be built on a perfectly good RoW that use to be the SP Valley Branch. Pasadena gets a nice new light rail with brand new stations… We get a stupid bus that nobody but people who don’t have cars anyway, will ride.
Hmmm… reminds me of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, where there was a plot to replace the Red Cars with the brand-new “freeway”…
I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle. I recall reading about a bus shelter in Alaska that cost more money than it possibly even could – that would be pork – while there are, I’m sure, some projects in there that are legitimate projects – “earmarks” do not do them justice!