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Title: Trump’s stance on high-speed rail clashes with House Republicans’
Source:
McClatchyDC
URL Source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/pol ... /election/article89666597.html
Published: Jul 16, 2016
Author: Michael Doyle
Post Date: 2016-07-16 19:54:50 by Willie Green
Keywords: None
Views: 4611
Comments: 24
WASHINGTON -- High-speed rail potentially puts Republicans in the House of Representatives and presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump on different tracks. While Republican lawmakers used a hearing Thursday to question high-speed rail projects like one underway in California, Trump has urged greater federal investment in fast trains. The divisions could further complicate life for a Trump administration. “The California project, some have told me, is off the tracks,” Rep. John Mica, a Florida Republican, said Thursday, adding that “unfortunately, that project has been in turmoil from almost the beginning,” Trump, meanwhile, has called for greater federal effort on high-speed rail. “China and these other countries, they have super-speed trains. We have nothing,” Trump told The Guardian newspaper last year. “This country has nothing. We are like the Third World, but we will get it going and we will do it properly.” Trump has backed, as well, eminent domain to secure private property for public works, calling it “absolutely . . . a necessity.” In California, its use for the high-speed rail line has angered property owners and GOP lawmakers, among others. Trump has not made a specific proposal for high-speed rail, while Mica and other GOP critics of the California project maintain support for other spending on rail infrastructure. The transportation politics can quickly get complicated, and sorted out only on a case-by-case basis. Still, Mica’s skepticism, voiced at a hearing convened by a panel of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, echoes other Republicans who have challenged the project underway in California’s San Joaquin Valley. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, California, and Rep. Jeff Denham, a Republican who represents Turlock, California, and is a former chair of the House railroad subcommittee, have repeatedly sought to cut federal spending on what’s ultimately envisioned as a Los Angeles to San Francisco rail network with an estimated $64 billion price tag. Construction began last year on the initial segment, with the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s latest plan calling for bullet trains connecting rural Kern County and Silicon Valley’s San Jose by 2025. “Let’s end this project that continues to waste taxpayer dollars,” Denham said last year during debate over an amendment intended to restrict spending. The Republican-controlled House also approved in 2012 and again two years later Denham’s amendments to cut off federal funds for the California project. In the 2014 vote, 221 Republicans voted to cut the money while only three supported the high-speed rail spending. They have trains that go 300 mph. We have trains that go chug, chug, chug, and then they have to stop because the track splits.
~Donald Trump, comparing U.S. and Chinese rail systems
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#1. To: Willie Green (#0)
I support High Speed rail for certain parts of the country - it is needed.
Not in this country...
Why the dog in the manger attitude? elsewhere in the world these projects have proven very beneficial and cut the reliance on motor vehicles for distance travel. It is even a viable vehicle for private investment, in my country they now see joint rail and property development as a way of getting it done without government involment.
Eight years after voters in Hawaii approved a referendum clearing the way for construction of the rail line, many of the concerns that have been voiced during a 40-year debate over the project have turned out to have merit. The project was initially projected to cost $4.6 billion, but that number now is $6.7 billion, forcing the city in January to ... approve a five-year extension of a general excise tax surcharge --- to help cover the overrun. “It’s a disaster. In my view, we are worse than how we expected,” said Panos D. Prevedouros, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Hawaii, who has twice run for mayor opposing the project. “We were saying at the beginning we would be lucky if it could be done for $6.4 billion, and people thought we were close to lunacy. We are sitting here today, and we are now computing about $7.1 billion cost.” “People are very angry about it,” said Mayor Kirk Caldwell of Honolulu, as he drove through the streets of his city. “But we are now heading toward eight miles completed. It’s like we are pregnant — we can’t just stop and tear it down.” “What is happening is what most of us predicted would happen,” he said. “The way I look at it, it might hit $9 billion. They haven’t hit the hardest part yet.” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/21/us/hawaii-struggles-to-keep-rail-project-from- becoming-a-boondoggle.html If you ... don't use exclamation points --- you should't be typeing ! Commas - semicolons - question marks are for girlie boys !
Just because America has become corrupt that does not mean high speed rail is not a good idea. They initiated an inter island high speed ferry in Hawaii and the local shipping monopoly there shut it down.
Trains are absolute waste of public money. Its made for peons who must pray that they do not have to deal with animals while be stuck in a cage until it reaches the next destinations with no ability to protect themselves or their family from animals. If you defend yourself in a big city you become the criminal because you dare to be free citizen instead of peon. Trains cost to much to build. Trains cost to much to maintain. Trains can not even pay for the labor need just to run them through ticket sales. You can't fix stupid and thats what you have to be to think trains are the future under progressive's control!
I have nothing against it for the most part. They just need to stay away from private property and don't steal the land through imminent domain.
It is needed. I will give an example. In New York City many of the work force live about 2 + hours away from their work and commute that distance on old fashioned trains, busses or drive in. That is 4 plus hours out of people's lives. They do this because property and rental values are not within their budgets. Meanwhile places that are over 2 hours away from New York City see property values crash and are becoming depopulated as people move away as jobs disappear. They need to be closer to the city for work now but that eats into how much money they get to live on because living expenses eat into income more the closer they are to work. The reason this is happening is that we are seeing a depopulation of suburbia as factories, etc close We are seeing a re-ubranization. How will high speed rail change stuff for the NYC area? Imagine if I live in cheaper Philadelphia but commute to NYC in half an hour/45 minutes? Imagine I own a food catering business and now I can cater events in NYC? Vice versa. I can now live deep into upstate New York and commute to New York City. More people move upstate New York to take advantage of the cheap property and better living conditions while working in New York. Property values and the economy rise in formerly depressed rural areas and rents are lowered in the urban areas.
I heard they can piggyback on highway system.
I think this is a good alternative to high speed rail and we get it first: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-1125-startz-high-tech-highway- 20151124-story.html
In the New York area in particular, we should start with the low-hanging fruit that requires very little eminent domain and very little infrastructure, but gets huge bang for the buck: Very High Speed ferry. Hovercraft, that don't throw up a wake and can travel at high speed over shallow water. New York is on three islands, and the places where everybody lives in Westchaster and up the Hudson, or along the Connecticut or New Jersey coasts, are all old ports, they all have disused dock facilities. All that the City has on the waterfront most places is a bunch of roads. High speed hovercraft can tool along at 80 mph. People simply need to commute to a parking lot in their coastal town, park where parking is cheap, and get on a hovercraft ferry that can get them downtown New York in 30 minutes. Westport CT, for example, is 67 miles from downtown as the wolf (or road or train line) runs). At rush hour it takes over 2 hours in a car, or 1:15 in a train. But it's 50 miles as the dolphin swims, and the East River isn't even used for shipping traffic, so it isn't as though these are crowded waterways. A huge amount of pressure could be taken off the trains and the roads, without having to build rails or roadways. Hovercraft are not particularly expensive to build or operate, and they can carry a lot of people. If you put the docks in the city near the subway lines, you have given people a fast way in. Find out what you need to operate it non-profit, incorporate it into the MTA, and get on with it. The waterways are unused, and they don't get blocked by snow or traffic jams. The docks are mostly unused. Hovercraft are really fast, and they don't care about things like ice or shallow water or bad docking facilities - you can run them up a ramp. They don't take large crews. It doesn't have to be a "luxury service" but can be a general service.
Trump ,like every big spending progressives ,loves huuuuuuge pork laden spending bills disguised as infrastructure improvement.
In bridge, you have wild cards called trump cards. T he trump cards are really wild because they change from hand to hand, depending on the bidding.
Give Dump the contract and I bet he will get it done with property development all along the line, he will make billions and the government will save billions. These things can be built by spanning over existing roads, they can't use existing infrastructure anyway, What it takes is some out of the box thinking
The real question is ;is there a need for it ? For most of the country the answer is no .For the rest ;if it can be justified ,then let it come from regional budgets or through a public -private partnership . The only AMTRAC line that makes money if from Boston to Washington.
In bridge, you have wild cards called trump cards. The trump cards are really wild because they change from hand to hand, depending on the bidding.
A lot of people blame Robert Moses who was infatuated with automobiles and wanted to build more car lanes and bridges and ignored the fact that New York City is mostly Island and the Bronx is a peninsula.
He's long dead. We, the living, can remake things as we please. Yes, it costs money.
Moses was removed from power around the time money for such things dried up. We had a Cold War to pay for (which included Vietnam) amongst other projects (some successful and some not).
The "Cold War" was based on the CIA created administration in 1948, signed into law by Harry Truman. The USA has gone down hill ever since and has NEVER won anything other than making America a poor nation.
Well Tom you might want to ask a different question, How many jobs will it create? is it a means to an end? White elephants have been built before in the name of nation building, how about thinking about it in terms of freight, not just passengers, the way to make railways profitable is to get utilisation rates up. Fast trains compete with airlines by being able to offer quick point to point service, obviously you don't build them where there is no population but tourism is a big market
Also don't steal the "investment" funds for it through taxation. If it's such a great idea real investors using their own money will get on board. A government strong enough to impose your standards is strong enough to ban them. Just like real investors, using their own money, built our Interstate Highway System?
Government beat them to it - and almost certainly built many economically unjustifiable stretches of road. A government strong enough to impose your standards is strong enough to ban them. And he never got to enter the Promised Land either. A dollar short and a day late, for three millennia and counting.
:-D
A government strong enough to impose your standards is strong enough to ban them.
#2. To: Pericles (#1)
I support High Speed rail for certain parts of the country - it is needed.
#3. To: rlk (#2)
Not in this country...
#4. To: Pericles (#1)
#5. To: BorisY (#4)
#6. To: Willie Green (#0)
#7. To: Pericles (#5)
#8. To: rlk (#2)
#9. To: A K A Stone (#7)
#10. To: A K A Stone (#7)
#11. To: Pericles (#8)
#12. To: Willie Green (#0)
#13. To: tomder55 (#12)
#14. To: paraclete (#13)
#15. To: Vicomte13 (#11)
#16. To: Pericles (#15)
#17. To: Vicomte13 (#16)
#18. To: Pericles (#17)
We had a Cold War to pay for (which included Vietnam) amongst other projects (some successful and some not).
#19. To: tomder55 (#14)
The real question is ;is there a need for it ?
#20. To: A K A Stone (#7)
I have nothing against it for the most part. They just need to stay away from private property and don't steal the land through imminent domain.
#21. To: ConservingFreedom (#20)
If it's such a great idea real investors using their own money will get on board.
#22. To: Willie Green (#21)
Just like real investors, using their own money, built our Interstate Highway System?
#23. To: Pericles (#17)
Moses was removed from power around the time money for such things dried up.
#24. To: Vicomte13 (#23)
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