Mouse,

It is good to hear from you that it may have been deemed to be apparently beyond our capabilities to engineer "base" tunnels in an earthquake fault zone....?

I have plenty of valid criticism of the CHSRA and our current efforts to create a viable and effective passenger rail system in California. But, I try to base my criticisms on facts. Thus, my views tend not to be based on bizarre political conspiracy theories, or the tunnel "physics" in an earthquake, that you and most of the general public "learned" from the Universal City "earthquake" ride (all of which is wrong).

Since it would appear to me that lots of folks, over the last two hundred years, including even we Americans, have successfully built thousands of tunnels through fault zones, this reasoning would seem flawed, and/or that this purported constraint is untrue?

And, as for the other "counter" theory about the evil asphalt conspiracy.....? I also favor more road construction, too. This is because, due to my experience in this part of the transportation field, I have seen ample "evidence" of the aging and decaying state of our roads, bridges, and interstates, and the costs that congestion is imposing on our lives. We also do use our cars, and we will likely continue to use even cleaner and more efficient cars and trucks, for the foreseeable future, and we will need modern roads.

I am happy that the concept of a bored tunnel under the mountain at or near the end of the 118 is being considered. Since I had also identified this route between the 210 and the 14 to ACS Dragados several years ago as a potential "privatized" for profit "toll tunnel", to relieve congestion through Santa Clarita at the 5/14 split. I also had the opportunity to identify this as a potential alternative to Mike Antonovich's staff a few years ago, as a means of achieving a 1 hour rail time from Palmdale/Lancaster to downtown LA, (where, as you noted, those "evil" "greedy" developers are building all of those damned houses in our evil free market capitalist system.....?)

If California or the US had a truly innovative public private partnership infrastructure policy, the "118" extension could be easily built as a self sustaining and profitable toll tunnel concession to a private entity to finance, design, build, operate, and maintain. And, the lower second level, could be used for the rail connection, which would allow for both high speed and commute access, with significant time savings for all modes.

The tweedle dumb versus tweedle dumber quality of the debate, that passes for our current transportation infrastructure policy "discussion", is truly a costly embarrassment to America, which reflects neither our heritage, nor our capabilities in this field.