The WaPo earlier this week ran an editorial against California high-speed rail, and on Friday ran a response from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. As the dedicated anti-California HSR blog High-Speed Train Talk says, the letter does a pretty good job of summing up everything that’s wrong with the guy.
The letter starts off with this stunningly ignorant comparison to highway building in the 1950s:
If President Dwight D. Eisenhower had waited until he had all the cash on hand, all the lines drawn on a map and all the naysayers on board, America wouldn’t have an interstate highway system.
And if it didn’t have an interstate highway system, maybe rail transportation wouldn’t have died out in the first place!
We also learn that “put[ting] Californians back to work” is “perhaps [the] most important” goal of the project – a candid admission that this project is more about making work for union workers than it is about transportation. This was obvious beforehand – we will, after all, pay double for the HSR trains due to procurement protectionism – but it’s nice to see LaHood finally admit it.
And just in case we still harbored any delusions about LaHood’s reasoning skills, he rounds the letter out with this blatant tautology:
Focusing the total sum of our federal dollars in one project, as The Post suggests, is a poor strategy that will not serve our long-term goal of creating a national high-speed rail network.
I am for CA High Speed Rail, but I dont like the way they are building it at present. The first run of track should be on one of the corridors with proven ridership. This means turning one of those 1.5 hour trips into 45 minutes or less. I would be surprised if ridership didnt vastly increase vastly even from current levels if the time of trains from Sacramento-East Bay (ideally San Francisco itself with a second transbay tube) or LA-SD was halved. Presently the trains take as long as driving (literally, its practically the exact same time), and ridership is still decent.
California is by far the most densely developed state in the West. Even LA is denser than most people think. The biggest problem with the High Speed rail is the cost-effectiveness of the flagship route, SF to LA. However, if they make it 2.5 hours door to door, for $75 a ticket, I’d call that a winner. I’d certainly never fly down to Socal again, even if it means me paying the difference from some shuttle flight airfare. About those Airfares…. Rail is more competitive than people think. Last-minute bookings and business travelers subsidize the vacationers who book 6 months in advance. So even if $30 tickets to Socal exist now, what happens when the people paying $150 for the latter third of those tickets take the $75 train instead? (im pretty much making these numbers up, but you get the idea)
I do however think that the Northeast corridor is absolutely the most important line that isnt getting built. That Amtrak plan from a few months ago should be built out fully, post-haste. Reducing the time and holding the line on cost within the corridor is vital to keeping our nations densest and most heavily populated corridor competitive.
Despite the failures of the 20-cent piece and the Susan B. Anthony dollars, and despite resistance from the general public, the U.S. government persists in developing small-size dollar coins. Its latest experiment, the Sacagawea dollar, has met with some success.
The Eisenhower dollar was originally meant to honor the astronauts of Apollo 11 for their historic landing on the moon. However, a portrait of Ike was placed on the front of the coin because he died a few months before the lunar landing took place. The reverse of the coin shows an eagle landing on the moon with an olive branch in its talons. The Ike dollars made for general circulation were made of the same copper-nickel-clad metal used on other U.S. coins beginning in 1965, but collectors were allowed to purchase specially packaged Uncirculated and proof example in 40 percent silver. In 1975 and 1976, a special design was used to celebrate the U.S. bicentennial.
The face, properly known as the obverse, has the profile of this beloved president, bearing a mintmark under his neck of an “S” if it’s minted in San Francisco or a “D” if it’s minted in Denver. You won’t find any mintmarks on Eisenhower dollars struck in Philadelphia. Coins minted in 1971 have an “FG” on them instead, for the coin’s designer, Frank Gasparro. The reverse, or the tail, changed dependant upon the occasion at that time. Apollo 11’s insignia decorated the reverse of the first edition coin, with an eagle holding an olive branch resting over the surface of the moon. The design was changed for the bicentennial, and although the moon was still present, it had the image belonging to the Liberty Bell in front of it. Minted from 1971 – 1979, these coins were known for being the very first without any precious metals but weren’t as widely circulated . Both these 1971 coins and the 1976 Bicentennial coins became mementos of the special years.