Prop 1A Bonds for High-Speed Rail

Pros & Cons presented by the Oakland League of Women Voters.

Proposition 1A. Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train -- State of California (Bond Act - Majority Approval Required)

To provide Californians a safe, convenient, affordable, and reliable alternative to driving and high gas prices; to provide good-paying jobs and improve California's economy while reducing air polution, global warning greenhouse gases, and our dependence on foreign oil, shall $9.95 billion in bonds be issued to establish a clean, efficient high-speed train service linking Southern California, the Sacramento/San Joaquin Valley, and the San Francisco Bay Area, with at least 90 percent of bond funds spent for specific projects, with federal and private matching funds required, all bond funds subject to an independent audit?

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[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.

[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 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]

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.

[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]

@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.

[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 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 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.

[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.