Re: When considering the alternatives
Author: FUD
Date: 12-12-2020 - 06:36
Initial caveat: for rail, I'm thinking of the way things were before Covid. Things will almost certainly be different for a long time.
Rail vs I-5: It's not either-or. It's both. I-5 has probably nearly reached its limit in terms of expandability, at least in the urban areas. Rail, especially electrified at a decent speed, can provide nearly another freeway's worth of capacity in a smaller footprint. The studies address that: rail is an addition to the freeway, not a replacement. Naysayers like to point out that adding rail won't have much if any effect on traffic congestion - that's true, and the old saw about making room for more drivers also has some truth to it. Overall, it provides an alternative mode of travel in the corridor that will attract riders from various groups, not all of which would have made the trip if they had to drive or ride a bus. That's not really a bad thing. The main questions revolve around environmental and social impacts, and of course who pays for it (because passenger rail never pays for itself; there's always some real or implied subsidy to account for the public good of compressing travel into a small physical and environmental footprint). The "who pays" thing is always a balancing act, and is usually what determines whether the project will work, not the technical issues.
Is BG really willing to cut a multi-billion dollar check?