Experts Expound

Pull the plug on high-speed rail or go ahead with the project?  What’s your take?

Mass transit projects have rarely lived up to their billing, our political leaders should concentrate on other ways to create jobs.  But politics will get in the way and the issue will be with us for decades.

We have to bring that “little engine that could” mentality into a high-speed rail paradigm. We may have to ease into it, but the future demands high-speed rail. It will only get more expensive if we delay.

Let me get this straight: If we have a bullet train, I pay more to get to Fresno and arrive sooner. Thumbs down.

This kind of can’t-pencil-out-but-shows-we-can-do-it project reminds me of the Soviet Union, or, more precisely, the Soviet Union’s bankruptcy.

Bite the bullet. Build the dang thing. Thirty years from now, when travelers are whooshing up and down the Golden State in comfort without fussing with airports or clogged highways, they’ll wonder what all the fuss was about.

Pull … the … plug. The speed with which technology has advanced over the past decade almost guarantees this white elephant will be obsolete long before it can be completed. The state would be soooo much better off investing that $100 billion in more conventional – and more widely used – transportation systems.

Put the project and the taxpayers out of their misery.

Full speed ahead! Hard to say no to one million jobs in this economy.

It is amazing that funding the train is even on the table.  The state is billions in the hole over its last phony baloney budget putting us in yet another crisis. Crime is up.  The cops can’t protect us, and when we want to protect ourselves they criminalize it and prosecute us.  And instead of cutting entitlements they’re letting crooks out of jail.  So the solution must be to spend billions on a train to nowhere.  The Greeks have dishonored their bond debts. That may end up being our only choice and still California’s leaders want to borrow money by selling bonds.  I wonder what color the sky is in the liberal world.  

California badly needs a more modern transportation system, badly needs a cleaner environment, and badly needs hundreds of thousands of good, new jobs.

High-speed rail provides all of that. It’s what conservatives call a boondoggle. Build it now.

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