Train Ride to Hollywood

I'm not talking about Bloodstone's 1975 pop movie.

Brightline Holdings, a company known for building passenger rail lines, is constructing a new high-speed rail line from Las Vegas to Los Angeles.  Well, not exactly all the way to LA.  It would terminate at Rancho Cucamonga, California, where it would like to commuter rail connection to downtown Los Angeles.  Most of the 218-mile track would be laid in the median of Interstate 15 to relieve weekend traffic between the two cities.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is quite bullish on the project.  He made that clear at an event celebrating the project at the site of a terminal to be built outside the Las Vegas Strip.  "People have been dreaming of high-speed rail in America for decades," he said.  "It’s really happening this time."

Whatever.

If I sound blasé about this project, that's because I am.  High-speed rail works best when it connects transit-friendly cities, and Los Angeles and Las Vegas are probably the most autocentric cities in America, or at least the most autocentric cities in America west of Houston. Woody Allen once joked that Los Angeles' idea of a cultural advantage is a right turn on a red light, while Las Vegas, apart from the Bellagio's art collection, doesn't have a culture.  It does, though, have a lot of casino-hotels so far apart for each other that the idea of taking an Uber from one of them to the railway terminal would be a trek in and of itself.

Also, both Los Angeles and Las Vegas are major metropolises that were built in the desert.  LA is too big for its location along a semi-arid stretch of the Pacific coast, and Las Vegas has even less reason to be in such a remote, hot corner of Nevada.  Ironically, it was founded as a "tank town" - a town meant to service the railroad line between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City because it was roughly equidistant from both cities.  Why would you want to build any transport project to encourage more growth in cities stretched way beyond their limits? 

And - and you knew this was coming - why doesn't Brightline build a high-speed rail line connecting ur heavily populated megalopolises in the Northeast or the Midwest?  Better yet, why doesn't Amtrak do that?  In the Northeast, Acela remains a joke, and in the Midwest, Republican governors and legislatures have successfully resisted efforts to upgrade Amtrak service to high-speed rail.  These places need bullet trains the most.  And if Buttigieg really wants to help high-speed rail in California, he'll get the Biden administration to get that Los Angeles-San Francisco line finished.  That line is way over budget and way behind schedule.  As for Brightline's track record (no pun intended), it operates a train in Florida from Orlando to Miami that only runs 125 mph - a slowpoke by European standards.   

As for me, I'm not pushing for bullet trains anymore.  It's become obvious that real high-speed rail, at least where I live (full disclosure: I live in the Northeast), is a pipe dream.  If I ever do ride on a bullet train, it will be in Europe - assuming, of course, Trump isn't returned to power and doesn't close the nation's borders to people wanting to leave.    

High-Speed Fail - California Edition

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.     

 

Transport Is a No-Go?

President Obama just came out with a wonderful idea on how to create more jobs and get the economy moving, the very sort of idea Chris Matthews has been calling for on MSNBC - spend more money on transportation infrastructure, creating what Matthews calls "the smell of construction." Obama wants to spend $50 billion on upgrading America's passenger rail network, highways, and airport runways and pay for it by closing tax loopholes. Now who could possibly be against spending money to create more job and improve America's transportation network?

Oh, right. . . .

John Boehner, of course, has slammed the proposal as more government spending that does nothing to stimulate the private sector - except provide contracting opportunities for the privately owned companies that would actually build all this stuff, though you won't hear Boehner admit that. The right-wing New York Post, on its front page today, lampooned Obama as a pothole President as dismissed his latest proposal as another government spending spree.

You know, back when Congress passed the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act in 1991, Republicans were against a lot of items in that law. Many congressional Republicans were opposed to more mass transit spending, and President George Bush did not want to commit a lot of money to Amtrak. They were for more spending on highways. They argued in favor of more highway spending to allow Americans the ability to travel where they wanted and when they wanted by car. Of course, people mostly use they cars to get to places they have to go to - like work. But at least in 1991, Republicans were at least for something, not simply saying no to the Democratic congressional majority of the time. Now they don't even want to spend more money on highways, and they don't want to spend more money on aviation either.

What's going to happen when Interstate 75, which runs through Boehner's district, starts falling apart? What would be wrong with the proposed high-speed rail line that would serve the Cincinnati area, where Boehner is from, adding more jobs to his district? Boehner apparently wants to become Speaker of the House first before he answers those questions.

A Little Doesn't Go a Long Way

I'm very happy that President Obama has decided to bring fuel economy standards up to 39 miles per gallon for cars and 30 miles a gallon for light trucks, coupled with stricter emissions standards to reduce gases that cause global warming. My problem with the plan is this: Does it go far enough?

Sure, stricter fuel economy standards will give us more fuel-efficient cars, and it may well indeed reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent, but will Americans go for cars like this as long as gasoline remains cheap? Americans don't but small cars unless they have no choice or simply like small cars. Because there aren't enough Americans in the latter category, it makes sense to start reducing subsidies on gasoline and raise the gas tax to make driving more expensive, which would encourage greater usage of public transportation and lead to more compact neighborhoods and developments that take up less space. As long as cars are simply more fuel-efficient, we'll merely be burning less gas to get to the shopping mall or office park, and we'll get stuck in traffic in the process.

We need more public transportation. The Obama administration owes the country some more talk on what kind of mass transit network America needs and how to achieve it.

The Miller's Tale

The economic stimulus bill finally passed, and President Obama will sign it possibly as early as Tuesday. I got to thinking that the Republicans will do everything to stop it not because of the cost or the insufficient (for them) number of tax cuts, but for the fact that this bill will take money from some to help someone else.

For example, Republican Representative Candace Miller of Michigan voted against it in part because the bill is helping to finance bullet trains, particularly one to run between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Now why would she object to federal funding for bullet trains - indeed, all public transportation, as she intimated?

Gee, maybe because the preponderance of public transportation would cut into the very profitable business of Michigan's best known product - cars?

Rachel Maddow inexplicably couldn't see the logic of the Congresswoman's vote.

Expect Representative Miller to be very supportive of any future economic stimulus measure specifically aimed at highway spending.