California High-Speed Rail Thread

[pikachu]

News that will only shock people on the left

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who knew?  Oh yeah, everybody.  Sure, most of the money will be going into the pockets of rich guys, but those dozens of temporary jobs will make it totally worth the $100B price tag.  Clearly we need more govt run mass transit.

We do, especially in California! That being said, HSR linking SF and LA was obviously always going to be a mess, and I think HSR advocates made a big mistake by not starting off with easier routes like LA to San Diego or LA to Vegas. Both would've taken less time and been massive successes, which could've made people more tolerant of state-wide HSR.

Also, LOL at thinking Hyperloop (or anything else Elon Must is going to do) wouldn't have eventually required state funding or ran into similar issues.

[pikachu]

We'll see I guess.

Why do you think they went with the "mess" first if it the other, "easier" routes were obvious?

With the recent financial disaster we all ignored that was the DC's trolly system ($200M so 3000 can go up and down one street for free), when was the last good example of American mass transit?  Perhaps I only hear about the ...ahem....train wrecks because of my choices in news.

The DC trolly system was unnecessary, and I think most transit advocates agree.

Anyway, since you asked:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_Line_(Los_Angeles_Metro) (Can personally vouch this has been very useful)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Line_(Los_Angeles_Metro)
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2016/08/houston-bus-system-ridership/496313/
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/10/how-seattle-bucked-a-national-trend-and-got-more-people-to-ride-the-bus/542958/

(I don't follow that much transit news outside of SoCal tbh)

Also, some cities are still enthusiastic about the prospect of spending more on transit. While there's a fair argument that a lot of American transportation spending is wasteful, it's not that the projects are bad, it's that the spending process is deeply inefficient. I mean, if you look at Europe or Korea/Japan, they manage to do it way cheaper than we do.