Comments on: bullet trains for everybody! http://www.ibabuzz.com/transportation/2008/02/07/bullet-trains-for-everybody/ Getting around the Bay Area with Denis Cuff and the Queen of the Road Tue, 17 May 2011 06:04:22 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: timote http://www.ibabuzz.com/transportation/2008/02/07/bullet-trains-for-everybody/comment-page-1/#comment-2410 timote Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:58:50 +0000 http://www.ibabuzz.com/transportation/2008/02/07/bullet-trains-for-everybody/#comment-2410 The govenator can be bypassed by the initiative process, just as he has (attempted) to do several times.

If the bond passes, it will happen. $10 billion is too much to throw down the drain.

Save your obituaries for if the bond fails.

]]> By: david vartanoff http://www.ibabuzz.com/transportation/2008/02/07/bullet-trains-for-everybody/comment-page-1/#comment-2411 david vartanoff Sun, 10 Feb 2008 06:23:14 +0000 http://www.ibabuzz.com/transportation/2008/02/07/bullet-trains-for-everybody/#comment-2411 yes, land speculation was a huge part of railroad building in the 1800′s da capo al coda

]]> By: Guy Span http://www.ibabuzz.com/transportation/2008/02/07/bullet-trains-for-everybody/comment-page-1/#comment-2412 Guy Span Sat, 09 Feb 2008 00:33:07 +0000 http://www.ibabuzz.com/transportation/2008/02/07/bullet-trains-for-everybody/#comment-2412 $10 billion is just for the Lionel starter set. The full cost, like Japan’s 1962 New Main Line, will not be known for years. And some spectacularly poor estimators will likely be involved such as Boston’s Big Dig engineers (Parsons and also Tudor) who only missed the Dig’s estimate by about $7 Billion dollars.

I am in favor of the project, but I find that between the Pacheco alignment and the Governators strong opposition, this pig won’t fly. That’s a couple $100 million down the tubes for work that will have to be re-worked when we finally get around to actually build the darn thing.

For now, High Speed Rail is a doomed side show headed for an inevitable funeral. In the words of a Southern Railway General Manager when passing a derailment site in the Georgia swamps and noting the corner of boxcar jutting above the mud, “Well, it’s dead, but it just hasn’t been buried yet.”

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