Legislative Analyst: California can afford high-speed rail bond

Vroom!

H/t to Sean B. He also notes that:

1. A UC-Merced professor conducted a study that predicts the Central Valley alone will directly gain $3 billion in benefits.

I say do it. Investing in rail is about as long-term as terms can get, and high-speed rail is an example of infrastructure that needs a certain amount of investment up front to get started, but the more of it there is the easier it is to expand outwards. That is, once you have a main route established it's that much easier for other districts to decide they want access to high-speed rail as well, places that wouldn't be able to afford it on their own.

I also have a selfish desire to want one day to be able to take the train from Seoul to Calgary (or some other part of North America) because I always feel a weird sense of disconnect in always flying back and forth, and would like to see the land alone, one kilometre at a time, as it changes from Korea to China then Russia, then Alaska and finally back down south.


Wikipedia gives the following as well:

...the report projects that high-speed rail operating costs would be between 4.8 to 5.9 cents per seat-mile, giving high-speed rail a better than 2:1 operating cost advantage over airlines.