Prop 1A Bonds for High-Speed Rail

[poseidoncambria]

YES ON 1A. Sorry to all of you, but CA voters voted in favor of high-speed rail. So whether you like it or not, it's gonna happen.

[juscurious]

Yes, fool but who is going to pay for it? No sane person will buy these bonds. They will be rated JUNK. I'm not going to be sorry, it's the fools who think this will happen. Even if by some miracle it does happen, it will be DECADES before a HSR will be operational. And it WON"T be HIGH SPEED.  It will require a permanent subsidy in the billions from the tax payers every year and there is only so far you can tax people before they up and leave. Unemployment is 12.5% and this won't help.

[juscurious]

Prop1A-NO

Prop 1B-NO

Prop 1C-NO

Prop 1D-NO

Prop 1E-NO

Prop 1F-Yes

We don't need high speed rail and we CANNOT affort it now. Nobody will ride this stupid train from LA to SF. It will never be build. If they did get funding it will go into the pockets of the scum bag lawyers who will fight this tooth and nail. Every passanger rail in the country is subsidized. BART is subsidized. This is a terrible idea. What's it cost to fly from SF to LA, $100 or so. Who will ride this train? Nobody.

[s2k997]

@juscurious You may want to know that the flying costs from SF to LA are set to double, as the charges to the airliners are going to soar shortly as both airports max out. It'll cost more money to expand those two airports than the entire High Speed plan! Basically there's a choice, pay for the HSR, or subsidise the planes, else neither'll be running in the end.

[juscurious]

So what. Even if cost go up it won't be as expensive as this boon doggle. If you haven't noticed the state is bankrupt & probably will default on its bond obligations. No sane person would buy a CA bond for HSR. The problem isn't getting from LA to SF. The problem is getting around within those areas. If I fly to LA I need a rental car to get around. Why not drive & use my own car. The idiots who voted for this are the reason we are in the shape we are in. HSR will require permanent subsidy.

[s2k997]

@juscurious Well we can go over the number if you want? To expand airport capacity to meet the local (and unprofitable by air-shortly without tax breaks) would cost about 15 Billion either end. That's 30 Billion, just on the Runways, taxiways, and Terminal building on either side; saying nothing of the planes or the subsidized fuel to do the runs with. It's a big "So what" as you'll either end up paying more for the airports, or even more clogged roads, see how well that works for business.

[s2k997]

@juscurious And your declaration that it'll require a perminant subsidy is relivant...how? The Interstates never come close to paying their own way, but they got built anyhow and are seen as economically crucial, as without transport the economy falls apart. Every peice of transport is subsidized, if you know where to look, planes and cars too. And from most HSR implimentations, they profit, as this one is forecast to, not make a loss, so that's a wild distortion right there.

[s2k997]

@juscurious Plus, it costs the state more money to keep those airsots hogged up by local travel that'd be displaced onto this high speed route over ten years, than this entire system will cost to construct. Ignoring your wild and unfounded guess that'll it'll need subsidies to run, which it likely won't unless the numbers have been dramatically cooked from what's been made publically available, it'd cost less than the alternative of sticking with the status quo.

[s2k997]

@juscurious You make some valid points (and some gross exaggerations, but still). If the system works, and pays for itself, which the civil engineers say it will, and saves that much money and more elsewhere over the decade, why not? Despite your assertion that air travel won't be that much more expensive, considering half the world's airlines are in the red due to fuel rises, I'd consider that a pretty critical sign that the days of cheap flight are numbered. Expect prices to fly up, and hard.

[juscurious]

Please go and read the history of Amtrak. I can remember in high school (1970's) they were saying that it would eventually be able to survive without subsidies. Well it's been 35 years and we still have subsidies. I don't know where you get your figures for Airports and the costs involved. There's no clogged airports from SF Bay area to LA. They won't be clogged anytime soon. It's not a problem. As for fuel considerations, do you thing trains run without fuel? Boy that's novel.

[s2k997]

I got the airport capacity problems from the Los Angeles Airport Commission. Feel free to disagree with the authority actually overseeing them, but I'll be siding with their opinion that LAX and others ARE maxed out right now, and that the landing slot fees are going to rapidly rise in order to churn up investment to replace terminal buildings which are over 30 years old, and to disaude less profitable flights.

[s2k997]

@juscurious No, I didn't think that trains ran without fuel. But I do think that they can run without oil on a modern system, a fuel which already is flying up and has aviation and the car industry by the balls, and is set to effectively end short haul aviation. The costs of sustaining very short commuter plane jumps is more than that of HSR, and unlike HSR, is going nowhere but upwards. And that's not considering the time taken by train is hours less than by air on this route.

[s2k997]

@juscurious Using Amtrak as a decent comparison of a modern railway is like using 1930s Aviation as the example of today's airliners. Trains in Britain and France moved faster on average before the first world war than those under Amtrak do today, they're incompetent and backwards to put it bluntly, and the FRA don't help with their bizarre and unusual regulations. Try using an actual High Speed Rail system to compare to a propsed High Speed Rail system, like the Madrid to Saville line.

[s2k997]

@juscurious Currently Amtrak is supported by less than a billion dollars of subsidies per year. Compared with the 10+ that goes into the Highways and Interstates from Federal government alone, they're getting less subsidizing that many parts of the American transport industry. None run at a profit, not even the airlines, if you look at the billions going into the airport infrastructure and what minute tax money trickles back. Transport is the key to economic growth and activitity, not optional.

[JimmyJackJohnnyJose]

VOTE NO on 1A

YES on 1A will double your Vehicle License Fee.

Politicians will always waste your money on any given chance. So don't give them your money.

NO on 1A.

[blah69]

MORE DEBT!!! GHAH.

At least no bonds are sold till they present what they wanna do P=. . .

[sideslide23]

vote yes on prop 1A because it will make the roads, freeway, and other roads safer than right now, because the train is fast reliable, and safer. so people would pefer taking that train when its finish.

[zorb350]

NO ON 1A!

[dijitalellatronica]

You can't even go from San Francisco to San Jose on BART! Now you want to go from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

What if we get electric cars sooner than 2030?

[s2k997]

@dijitalellatronica BART is a completely different system to HSR; it's a local area high density commuter network, it isn't supposed to go Intercity by the very principle on which it was built and ran!