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So someone sat down with a calculator and came up with an interesting fact regarding the 126 billion taxpayer dollars that is now considered to be the expected price for the high-speed rail line connecting LA, San Francisco and Sacramento.
Already some 20 billion dollars have been sunk into buying up properties for a rail line that doesn't yet exist.
As grateful as I am for this man's thinking, I think 126 billion might be only one tenth of the final cost. (Unless Steve Hilton, R, running for governor, manages to defeat the Big Election Cheating we usually experience.)
Off of today's Twitter timeline:
Hans Mahncke @HansMahncke
If you gave away $126 billion to subsidize free flights between LA and San Francisco at current demand levels, you could fund roughly 150 to 200 years of travel before the money runs out.
Revealing news clip from KTLA explaining concerns about how much the rail line could cost.
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Discussion (40)
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For that much money we could provide free housing and healthcare for 20 million illegal aliens.
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Let's not though.
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I like trains. I'm in favor of mass transit. I've never liked this train, because it makes no economic sense. Many of the arguments for it were superficial--"It would finally tie the state together". There's been rail between SF and LA for about 140 years, and passenger traffic largely abandoned it ages ago. Flights are not expensive.
There are two parallel major highways along the route, Interstate 5 and highway 101. Political ads, and news stories (same thing, unfortunately) always show images of ten lanes of traffic jams as if this is a problem that HSR will solve. But those video clips aren't of the 5 or 101; they're pictures of the morning traffic along the east-west 10, near downtown Los Angeles. In other words, they lie.
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but you already are. actually it is more.
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Yep!
You read my mind as you replied.
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