Jimmy

CNN.com today has a story about what stayed, what got cut and what actually got increased funding in the final stimulus bill (which still needs to be passed by the house and the senate, but the conference committee seems to have agreed on it which is good news), and the biggest winner in terms of percentage increase of funding from the original house or senate bills is High-Speed Rail funding which went from $0.3 Billion in the House version and $2.25 Billion in the Senate bill to $8 Billion in the final bill!

Given that that’s not even what California alone wants from the federal government to complete it’s $40+ billion HSR system this is not a terribly large amount of money, but it’s a huge start and wonderful that we’re finally addressing this issue on the federal level.

I am worried that the money won’t be spent wisely, however, since I think HSR has the huge potential to tank and take billions of public dollars with it if it’s not done exactly right. HSR needs to be part of a larger public transit system as it is in Europe and Asia (where it’s doing very well) but if we just kinda install some tracks randomly and generally do HSR like we’ve done Amtrak it’s not going to work. Many people have expressed concern about HSR proposals in the US because we’re far less densely populated than Europe and Aisa and I think those are valid fears. I don’t think HSR is impossible to make work in the US, but I do think it needs very careful planning, the type of planning I’ve never seen any transit planner in the USA display.

Eh. I could go on, but I have class in 10 minutes and haven’t completed the weekly homework. (I don’t think that’s gonna happen.)

Cheers.

-j

Posted in: Politics, Transit by jimmy2 /