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Re: California high speed rail will not die with a bang, but with a whimper
Author: BOB2
Date: 07-20-2017 - 13:45
I strong support high speed passenger rail service where they can cost effectively meet CA's increasing travel demands, in congested corridors, and where that congestion is costing us billions in lost productivity in delays.
I do not support the CHSRA fiasco, because it meets none of our most pressing travel needs, in corridors where there is aa demonstrated need for high speed and/or conventional rail passenger services, and is such a bloated and costly fiasco, that is delaying and has delayed by years, the funding of over a hundred much more cost effective rail passenger projects across CA, in corridors with the severest congestion and the greatest demonstrated demand for rail passenger service.
"Cap and Trade" of carbon emissions is, theoretically, intended to reduce the level of greenhouse gas emissions, from human activities, which are changing atmospheric carbon levels, leading to increased atmospheric and ocean temperature, leading to climate change and sea level rise. Funds generated from "Cap and Trade" thus, should, theoretically be spent on ways to offset emissions, at the lowest cost per ton of emissions. Unfortunately, expenditure of these funds on the CHSRA fiasco, is probably one of the least cost effective ways one could possibly think of to reduce carbon emissions, at possibly the highest cost per ton reduced, that one could find.
Finding a funding source to continue wasting more even money on a system that will meet few of our travel demands, with virtually no significant carbon emissions reductions, using "Cap and Trade" is a dubious measure of "success" for this misbegotten project.
This current phase of gratuitous waste, and profligate spending on the CHSRA fiasco, will end with a whimper, not a bang, and Plan B (the connection via Altamont included in the last gas tax increase)is already on the back burner, and can be used to save this costly bloated "stranded segment" from nowhere to nowhere, by connecting up to it.
There is a further problem with "Cap and Trade" is that with ever increasing energy efficiency overall, cheaper solar and wind, cheap natural gas, and with the end of drought lots more hydro, the value of carbon credits keeps falling, generating less revenue.
I support much more transportation spending on transit, rail, and highways, as our infrastructure is older than I am, and looks like crap, all while we crawl through traffic at a snails pace. But, wasting these "Cap and Trade" funds on the CHSRA, does nothing for that, at all.
I do not support the CHSRA fiasco, because it meets none of our most pressing travel needs, in corridors where there is aa demonstrated need for high speed and/or conventional rail passenger services, and is such a bloated and costly fiasco, that is delaying and has delayed by years, the funding of over a hundred much more cost effective rail passenger projects across CA, in corridors with the severest congestion and the greatest demonstrated demand for rail passenger service.
"Cap and Trade" of carbon emissions is, theoretically, intended to reduce the level of greenhouse gas emissions, from human activities, which are changing atmospheric carbon levels, leading to increased atmospheric and ocean temperature, leading to climate change and sea level rise. Funds generated from "Cap and Trade" thus, should, theoretically be spent on ways to offset emissions, at the lowest cost per ton of emissions. Unfortunately, expenditure of these funds on the CHSRA fiasco, is probably one of the least cost effective ways one could possibly think of to reduce carbon emissions, at possibly the highest cost per ton reduced, that one could find.
Finding a funding source to continue wasting more even money on a system that will meet few of our travel demands, with virtually no significant carbon emissions reductions, using "Cap and Trade" is a dubious measure of "success" for this misbegotten project.
This current phase of gratuitous waste, and profligate spending on the CHSRA fiasco, will end with a whimper, not a bang, and Plan B (the connection via Altamont included in the last gas tax increase)is already on the back burner, and can be used to save this costly bloated "stranded segment" from nowhere to nowhere, by connecting up to it.
There is a further problem with "Cap and Trade" is that with ever increasing energy efficiency overall, cheaper solar and wind, cheap natural gas, and with the end of drought lots more hydro, the value of carbon credits keeps falling, generating less revenue.
I support much more transportation spending on transit, rail, and highways, as our infrastructure is older than I am, and looks like crap, all while we crawl through traffic at a snails pace. But, wasting these "Cap and Trade" funds on the CHSRA, does nothing for that, at all.
