Donald Trump has demanded that California return federal funds given to the state to develop high-speed rail. This directive, though it may be difficult for Trump to enforce, should signal the end of efforts to build high-speed trail in California or any other place in America for awhile - maybe for good.
Gavin Newsom, California's new Democratic governor, and other Democrats suspect that this is payback on Trump's part for California suing the executive branch over Trump's national immigration "emergency." But I have a feeling that Trump would have found a reason to pull the plug on California's already-scaled-back bullet train even if Newsom had minded his business and not done anything to upset Trump at all. The truth of the matter is the Trump is a Republican, and Republicans have historically been against intercity rail transit since the jet age began. Even Richard Nixon, who nationalized intercity passenger rail with the creation of Amtrak in 1971, is believed to have done so as a precursor to getting rid of it.
I give up. If I'm going to ride anything resembling high-speed rail in America, I'll have to settle for the Acela - Spanish for "bullet train lite" - which I actually did ride once . . . in 2001, but not since then because I haven't been able to travel much in the past several years thanks to the hollowing out of the middle class . . . which we could rebuild by giving people jobs to build and run a modern intercity passenger train network!
Don't bet on that. Trump's attention span is so limited that he seems to have an "infrastructure week" every few months to talk about rebuilding America as an excuse for not talking about Russia or Robert Mueller.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment