Lisa Benson for January 10, 2015

also It won’t be 1.5 hours. When going through certain Cities there will be slow down zones regardless of what they say.

High-speed rail is never cost effective and in an earthquake-prone state not very wise. You could buy a huge fleet of natural gas powered buses with a lot less risk. Many private companies pay for their own buses to bring their people to work. Or you could, I don’t know, quit making the state so insanely expensive to live in that people could live near their jobs?

I like rail travel. Had our society not been so shortsighted as to believe that air and car travel would be the only way Americans would ever travel, there would still be many rail corridors that were four or more rails wide instead of just one or two. A major impediment to rail travel is the tendency to give priority to product over people on our fewer lines. A passenger train will often have to wait for a slower freight train before continuing on its way. Oil companies, car makers, and air lines spend millions to bribe lawmakers into passing laws that make rail travel less friendly to the American citizen, and the American citizen, except those in the Northeast, are in large numbers unaware of how efficient, convenient and comfortable rail travel can be when operated as it is in Western Europe. The DC metro is my favorite way to travel about the city when I visit, and my nephews and nieces in the NE US commute by rail to and from work and love being able to read, get ready for work, or surf their smart phones instead of being in a gridlock watching their gas gauges move towards E. If done with intelligence and professional workmanship, California’s rail plan will have short term pain with long term benefits.Respectfully,C.

Ms Benson seems to have honed in on the high speed rail. Suggest she open her eyes to more pressing issues that affect the public.Her work implies that she had investments in other venues.

What, California tax payers are THAT FAT (with cash)? “Well”, say the politicians, “let’s put them on the biggest looser diet!”. “After all”, the pols continued “they were foolish enough to vote us into power so the’re just sheep ready for shearing”.

Don’t forget the unions contributed to the demise of passenger travel by demanding a days pay for each 200 miles traveled, and not relaxing that as trains sped up.

“The reason these things don’t work is because people want control. Great, I take a high-speed to san fran, now what. I want to get around and look at things. I want to check out those curvy roads. The fisherman’s wharf, etc… I don’t know the bus system in San Fran. I want control…”In your scenario you could plan ahead and learn about the SF transit system online. If you can’t be bothered to plan ahead, there’s an app for that. You could also just rent a car while in SF to check out the curvy roads.

You’re all mixing apples and oranges. Light rail, inside a city, is flourishing in lots of places. Like Respectful Troll pointed out, the DC Metro is probably the single best way to get around metropolitan DC. What CA is building is a different beast – an inter-city rail system – those have a long history of dying due to low ridership.

In 1962 I was promoting using “Red Car” rights of way for rail commuting instead of more freeways in Southern California. Chrysler and Standard Oil came up with over a million dollars to counter our simple radio program. “Who framed Roger Rabbit” later used the them for their plot line.

Those rights of way instead were sold, or used for highways, just like vast mileages of rail lines the railroads were given vast acreage of oil rich lands to develop, have been removed, making rail deliberately less available to please auto, oil, and trucking (yes even the Teamsters got stupid on this one!).

A friend and co-worker in our state office in Portland drove his car to work every day, until he had ankle surgery and couldn’t drive for a while. He found commuter rail cut his travel time by more than half every day, and cut his commuting cost by 80%!! Interestingly, his walking distance from the train stop was one block, he’d been walking four blocks from his parking lot closest to work!

HIgh speed rail is highly efficient for longer distances, fuel consumption is only 500 times more efficient than with trucks or buses. Yep, I rode high speed rail in Japan; in 1967! It was clean, fast, efficient, and safe. Need we point in safety that auto deaths are the only thing to challenge guns for lethality in the U.S.?

I’m a gear head, love cars, have two classics (they get over 30 mpg and are high perfromance), but if it was available for commuting, I’d definitely use mass transit, if I could stand to live in a city.

A PERFECT illustration of American total stupidity is using technology to develop “self driving” CARS, where every “individual” can get in line and be stuck on a “freeway” (to be converted to toll roads) for hours, when a far more fuel, energy, space, and socially efficient TRAIN is called “stupid”.

“It’s just three hours. I’ll drive.”And deal with the traffic, smog, and cost of gas. It’s a trade off of whether you want to deal with issues associated with using the highway or train.

“The Tea Party are not the ones getting “free stuff”. For that you need to look to the ghettos.”You remind me of the Tea Party protesters with the “Keep your government hands off my Medicare” signs. Your use of the term ghetto seems on the surface to be code for something….

Please do not misunderstand me here. I too, think that such a rail system is a very good investment for the future of California.

The only problem that I have with the investment of so much in this infrastructure, is that there is a far more important issue for Californians to spend as much money on as possible. And that issue is Water! I am truly happy that the recent water proposition passed. But much more is needed. What is truly needed is just what the county of San Diego is doing. And that is to build a large salt water desalinization plant on the Pacific Coast.

In fact, far more such plants should be built. Enough in fact to cover all water needs in California except for those of agribusiness (which takes up at least 85% of all California water resources). This would leave natural water sources to take care of the very important agribusiness needs of the most important agricultual state in the USA.

And if that would not be enough, then more salt water desalination plants might then also be needed. This will be a very expensive proposition, but California should do this to free itself from this continued drought cycle that we always seem to be fighting!

And the rest of the USA (especially the South Western states that share in the drought problems of California) should also help in such an effort, as they would also benifit in keeping the food costs of using the agribusiness products of this great state down. After all, we are one “United States”, are we not?

California’’s “water problem” is the fact that most of the state is actually desert, and that includes both agricultural areas like the central valley (wherre they grew low-grade cotton for decades and dropped the water table), the Imprerial Valley is desert, Los Angeles is desert, and stole the Owen river from yet another desert area, then moved to every other source, like the L.A. aqueduct from the Colorado where they took more than their allotment for decades, until Arizona built the CAP and demanded their “share” back.

AGCC is only worsening the issue, not actually ‘creating" it. In the 1950’s Southern Callifornia was already talking about bringng icebergs south from the Actic, so much for that.

Saudis and they UAE are very rich, and operating desalinization plants, a very expensive process.

We WILL be seeing water wars again, and a lot sooner than folks in the public are even a little aware of, or so far, concerned about. They should be.

^No offense, but you ARE aware of how many glaciers are in Alaska? Glacier Bay etc. Pack ice also had very high volumes of suitable ice- which is where my “so much for that” comes in.

Anweir88 said, 1 day ago“You’re all mixing apples and oranges. Light rail, inside a city, is flourishing in lots of places. Like Respectful Troll pointed out, the DC Metro is probably the single best way to get around metropolitan DC. What CA is building is a different beast – an inter-city rail system – those have a long history of dying due to low ridership”——————————————————————————————DING, DING. DING! WINNER!

This is just Moonbeam Jerry’s typical liberal politicians dream of using other people’s money to stroke his own ego.I’m sure a section will be named the Brown Line. Meanwhile the people in California will be shelling out 70 BILLION DOLLARS……MINIMUM!

Right. Call me when the interstate highways become “profitable.” There are some things that taxpayers pay for because they’re worth having.