"Remember the disastrous high-speed train? The choo choo has a new boss at $375,000 a year
The high-speed rail boondoggle just gets uglier and uglier. The state rail authority has announced hiring Roelof vanArk, president of a French rail car manufacturing company, as chief executive. His paycheck?
$375,000 a year."
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At least they hired someone with experience in high speed trains. France actually has such things we only dream of.
ReplyDeleteCan we now get to work and build this thing?
Or would you rather have a dozen or more new toll ways.
Oh wait, maybe we should have hired a Chinese high speed rail guy since they are also building these.
I forgot for a minute, this blog comes from Orange County, of course it's the privatized toll roads for you guys. The toll booths will make things easier for the authorities when the O.C. passes it's own Arizona type immigration law. The rich will probably have some sort of free pass bar code that has all of their birth and citizenship papers built into it. The poor will have to stop and pay the toll and show their papers. That should work out good for folks in the O.C.
The gated communities could also use the bar codes to ensure only people driving cars that belong to citizens could enter.
This thinking goes along with the pro airport anti high speed train philosophy prevalent in the area. Change the baseball team in Fullerton to the Flyers instead of ....wait, I swore there was a train in the logo.
Tom, Roelof vanArk is the MANUFACTURE of the train cars. He has NO experience in right-of-way acquisition, seismic construction of transportation systems, California bonds and finance, or any of the many important areas that one would expect the Chief of a $45,000,000,000.00 PUBLICALLY FUNDED project to have. Roelof vanArk should be a consultant, NOT the boss.
ReplyDeleteFunny you should mention the toll roads. There are a couple of them in OC. One serves the extremely wealthy of Laguna Beach, the other serves the commuting workers who live in Riverside/San Bernardino and work in OC. Caltrans won’t build new roads/highways down here for two reasons. First, the cost. Second, they could never build it fast enough. It would take over 30 years for them to condemn the land and build it by which time the needs would have changed.
“This thinking goes along with the pro airport anti high speed train philosophy prevalent in the area. Change the baseball team in Fullerton to the Flyers instead of ....wait, I swore there was a train in the logo.” First, this “thinking” is what we are supposed to do: question authority. Second, no one wants to live near an airport. Third, no one wants to have their home condemned for a rail that will only serve the wealthy who like to get to SF without the hassle of the airport. What they forget is that a HSR will be just like an airplane as far as security, parking, and luggage are concerned. You’ll still have to show you papers to the authorities…
Yep, the Fullerton Flyers are NOT the Fullerton Flyers. They are now the Orange County Flyers and I am willing to bet they will be moving to Irvine next summer despite being offered a mostly free baseball stadium and park in Fullerton.
HSR has been a flustercuck for several years before you and I heard it was coming to a state near us. OCTA spent $7,000,000 on HSR FOUR YEARS BEFORE we ever went to the polls to vote on HSR. That’s $7,000,000 on top of the countless BILLIONS that will be spent so that wealthy people can go from Anaheim (through parts of Fullerton and Buena Park) to Los Angeles and they will save SEVEN, that’s 7, MINUTES. So, if you support HSR in OC, then you support a handful of people being able to save 7 minutes. Is that fare? We already have Metrolink which goes from Anaheim to L.A. in about 29 minutes. Will cutting it to 22 minutes be worth the BILLIONS of dollars we are sure to spend? I think not. Ride Metrolink and flush the HRS.
First of all, it sucks that the Flyers might go to Irvine. If ever there was a place not to go I would say Irvine is close to the top of the list.
ReplyDeleteSecond, did Dick Cheney ever dig oil wells? What made him qualified to run Halliburton or the US for that matter.
Third, if not for Henry Ford, there would probably be no freeways so I hold him responsible for getting those built.
And your point on Caltrans not building anymore freeways? My point exactly.
Lets build this train.
Obama has proposed 8 billion to get this started and France has pledged 80 billion over the next 10 years for their trains.
It would seem that France would rather keep their vineyards and agriculture than pave over it with 12 lanes of concrete.
And why is it your opinion that only rich people want to go to San Francisco?
I did not say that only the wealthy want to go to SF. I said the HSR will only serve the wealthy because the poor will never be able to afford the price of admission. There will be security screening and they will check your papers. It will be just like air travel but slower and more expensive.
ReplyDeleteHSR will provide very few long term jobs as compared with the short term construction boom it will create. It will never sell enough tickets in my lifetime to break even, much like the bus system in OC.
An important question that has to be asked and HSR will not answer is what is the alignment going to be. I want to know why they cannot build it down the center of existing freeways like Metrolink did. Instead, from what an HSR insider has said, it is cheaper to buy all the new right-of-way, bulldoze house and farms, and displace hundreds, if not thousands of families and workers. Don't you think that if was a moneymaking idea Boeing, Halliburton, Microsoft, or some other BIG company would have already done it? Toll roads are operated by a private company on private property for the benefit of anyone who cares to travel on it and can pay the fee. Tickets to ride the HSR will not be cheap. If they are cheap then that means We The People are STILL footing the bill. We would be competing against Amtrak, and the airlines and we would have an unfair advantage since government knows that tax payers have endlessly deep pockets. Right now, I have an IRA which is partially invested in SW Airlines. It makes money, I make money. With HSR I lose that money when they lose money and end up paying MORE via taxes to support something that undercut my investment. These are all simple concepts and valid reasons to NOT build HSR as it has been proposed. Let Siemens build it. Let this French guy build it. But don't send me the bill!
A smaller central government does not have to be proportionately inept to our current bloated government. If we cut the FAT from the government we might be able to focus on better regulating of offshore drilling. You don’t really think that BP is indifferent to this catastrophe, do you? They have instantly lost BILLIONS of dollars and will continue to lose BILLIONS of dollars. That’s why they give them selves the bonuses that they do, the risks involved are HUGE! I thought a few offshore rigs were no big deal until I heard a statistic that there are over 30,000 rigs in the gulf alone! A hundred rigs, ok. 30,000, rigs, OMG!
Speaking of catastrophes, California has some of the most active faults in the world. What happens when you have several hundred people on the HSR when one of those pesky 5.0 quakes takes out the track? To my knowledge, France is not known as the earthquake capitol of the world so I’m not sure they understand the risks involved.