Certainly some good ideas here.

But you've gotta know - that if Kaliphonia gets its greedy little hands on any of that money, it will all just disappear into the CHSRA, never to be seen again. Better, that we disband CHSRA, take away the 10 billion we already gave 'em, and use what there is left of it on projects such as you suggest.

One thing though, go ahead and build a passenger "cutoff" as direct as possible from Bakersfield to Los Angeles - The ideal being a dead straight line between them. Then sharply increase the total capacity of every existing passenger corridor in California and upgrade it to 110 mph, including the Coast Line. This sharp increase in existing line capacity should earn willing cooperation from private railroad partners. And 110 mph is plenty fast enough to spark a national rail renaissance, and is somewhat faster than what Japan's Bullet Trains started at. It was fast enough for them to start with; it'll be fast enough for us when we start. This is especially true when you take into account where American railroading actually is at the moment (third world).

This has actually been the approach taken by the Obama administration - one thing they actually got right. However, ranking repubs taking over the house have expressed criticism of these ideas, while at the same time expressing support for financially impossible pie in sky projects such as CHSRA. Go figure! There is a nasty probability that they are going to get this all wrong, make it completely hopeless, then say "See there - tried it - didn't work - too bad - told ya so! - it's now settled"

And as for those so-called "Shovel Ready" projects: Having been involved at the design engineering end of a few of them; it has become abundantly clear that they are pure mythology. The EIRs and planning decisions may be completed, but the actual engineering has not been - not even close. Mostly, no transit agency has been able to take on very much additional work, and many have in fact missed out on offered "TIGER" grants, because they could not meet the stringent time requirements. They were already swamped when the money was offered.

Too bad. Many were good ideas, but actual detail engineering always lags way behind the other stuff. And the needed staff to make it go faster just doesn't exist. Quickly hiring the additional needed expertise is not going to happen soon. It doesn't exist, or is already fully employed and more, elsewhere.

Moreover, both transit agencies/railroads and their consultants/contractors are already competing fiercely for the available talent. Virtually all of us have frequent multiple job offers. As I have been involved (on the side) in training new graduates on the job, I can see that the extra needed talent won't exist for quite some time, until a whole new crop of engineers eventually gets past the rather steep learning curve presented by railway engineering.

You should know also, that the sudden demand for PTS has greatly exacerbated this problem. Worse yet, is greatly endangered by it as well. The project has virtually no hope of even a mere 50% completion by the mandated time, and may even completely collapse.

The fact is, that in America; railroads, railroad technology and railroading talent, have all been severely neglected for decades; at every level and in every institution, including academia. Only a very few universities still teach "Railroad Engineering". There were once many! And don't even mention that engineering in general has been played down by American academia for decades, to the point that not enough are being graduated in the field to ever hope of supplying the demand.

So in America, our chickens are now coming home to roost. We are now going to pay dearly for the de-facto collapse of our dis-functional public education system, including colleges. Our instant message, instant gratification, entitled right now, me first, American society, will just have to wait - it turns out.

Of course, they could always hire talented pretenders, such as at CHSRA, BART, et al. but we have already been there done that. Public agencies have already been there done that so much, and so deeply in fact, that they don't even seem to know that they are paying 10 - 20 time the going rate that private industry is paying, for most everything.

Sadly California, already 49th state in education, is most certainly going to be the 49th state to ever figure it out and do it right - or may even the very last - if ever.

I for one, have long been getting quite demoralized by it - now pretty much done with them I suppose. I would like to go where there actually is some vision, even in government agencies. I guess I'll just have to get used to the snow somewhere!


OPB