Bullet Trains and Conveyor Belts
Some notes & quotes from recent reads:
Rail Spikes Hammered, Bullet Train Being Built From Sin City to the City of Angels
Quotes:
A $12 billion passenger bullet train linking Las Vegas and the Los Angeles area was dubbed the first true high-speed rail line in the nation on Monday, with the private company building it predicting millions of ticket-buyers will be boarding trains by 2028.
“People have been dreaming of high-speed rail in America for decades,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg before taking a stage with union representatives and company officials at the future site of a terminal to be built just south of the Las Vegas Strip. “It’s really happening this time.”
Buttigieg cited Biden administration support for the project that he said will bring thousands of union jobs, boost local economies and cut traffic and air pollution.
Brightline West, whose sister company already operates a fast train between Miami and Orlando in Florida, aims to lay 218 miles (351 kilometers) of new track almost all in the median of Interstate 15 between Las Vegas and Rancho Cucamonga, California. It would link there with a commuter rail connection to downtown Los Angeles. A station also is planned in San Bernardino County’s Victorville area.
Notes:
The subtext to this entire story is that the US has tried to install bullet trains repeatedly throughout modern history, and it’s generally not worked because of construction (and accompanying regulatory) costs, and due to how politicized such projects often become (especially when they start to go billions of dollars and years, at times decades, over budget).
There’s a chance that some of these new projects could pan out, though, as the US government is attempting to partner with (famously good at bullet trains) Japanese companies, and there are efforts to lighten some of the more restrictive regulations in some areas in order to help some of these projects come in closer to their intended cost, and sometime within this decade.
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