 |
The Real Issues Here
Author: Clem
Date: 05-22-2018 - 15:50
I hope the "shill" posting "attacks" wasn't me, because I was only pulling your leg. Possibly quite successfully.
I think there are two issues here, both worth being upset about:
1) Contracting is broken in the USA (and California especially). A small and politically connected band of private companies is writing their own paychecks, tying incompetent and hollowed-out government agencies into knots using their own contracting rules. Why do it right when you can do it twice. Give me a gratuitous mezzanine or give me death!
2) Passenger rail is under-valued and under-invested in the USA. There are 42000 route kilometers of high-speed rail in the world today, 27000 km of which is in China, most of it built in the last ten years. Meanwhile, here we are trying to build a piddly 800 km as the largest infrastructure project in the entire history of California, the 6th largest economy on planet Earth. What is wrong with this picture?
[www.railwaygazette.com]
The problem isn't HSR, and the solution sure isn't mediocre incrementalism. Meanwhile in Washington, they're asleep at the infrastructure switch.
I think there are two issues here, both worth being upset about:
1) Contracting is broken in the USA (and California especially). A small and politically connected band of private companies is writing their own paychecks, tying incompetent and hollowed-out government agencies into knots using their own contracting rules. Why do it right when you can do it twice. Give me a gratuitous mezzanine or give me death!
2) Passenger rail is under-valued and under-invested in the USA. There are 42000 route kilometers of high-speed rail in the world today, 27000 km of which is in China, most of it built in the last ten years. Meanwhile, here we are trying to build a piddly 800 km as the largest infrastructure project in the entire history of California, the 6th largest economy on planet Earth. What is wrong with this picture?
[www.railwaygazette.com]
The problem isn't HSR, and the solution sure isn't mediocre incrementalism. Meanwhile in Washington, they're asleep at the infrastructure switch.
