Re: CA HSR Update-Of tunnels, taxpayer dollars, and user needs....?
Author: BOB2
Date: 08-21-2018 - 12:31
The only tunnel I'd be building right now, would be with private financing, and it would be a bored, double, three lane, toll financed tunnel from the end of the 118 to SR-14, at about Lang, under Saugus Mountain, and down the back side of the hogback ridge. And, I'd lease and/or co-finance the second level for the 125 mph. HSR connection to the rebuilt ML line north to Palmdale and Lancaster. The second level could also allow for another aqueduct connection, and the train.
This "public/private" financed "tunnel", which would pay for itself from road tolls, from people saving 30 miles of hellish commute through the 5/14, and allow for a 1 hour trip from LAUPT to Palmdale. Then I would extend express LOSSAN 125 "HSR" service to the Antelope Valley, and much shorter travel time ML service, to the those 400,000 taxpayers and 150,000 travelers, who are stuck in ever increasing gridlock on the SR-14 and I-5 today.
Of course, this kind of "affordable" and "useful" kind of rail ?investment would, in your bizarrely Marxist fantasy world obviously benefit those "evil" capitalist "developers", building affordable housing to meet "evil" market demand.
But, just imagine a project properly planned, using actual analysis of our observed travel behavior, with well identified needs, with a clear, cost effective, and quicker set of much more affordable solutions to our real transportation needs and deficiencies....?
And, we should have been finishing the Union Station run-through this year, if we'd used cost benefit to select the most beneficial component to build first....
So no, I guess that my first priority, as a professional, using yours and my scarce taxpayer dollars, to build the kind of more usefel and affordable rail system CA actually needs, based upon public benefit and cost effectiveness criteria, probably wouldn't be Pacheco, Tejon, or any tunnel via Mojave….