Monday, June 11, 2012

US High Speed Rail displays


As seen in the Chicago Union Station.  The project for California has been in the news recently with claims it will cost a lot more and take a lot longer than originally projected.  That is nothing new of course, it is pretty standard for official projects generally, everywhere.  However, given the the amount of desert and otherwise waste space in the US it seems rather hard to fathom why the lines should cost as much and take as long to build as has been quoted in the most recent figures.  The TGV lines built in France simply followed the gradients in the terrain a lot of the time - few cuttings and tunnels were involved: such is the advantage of electric traction.  And needless to say, Republican Party silliness ("anything the President proposes must be opposed"), most notably in Wisconsin, has also been responsible for delays in some states. That infrastructure projects like this would help create jobs in the present depressed economy seems to escape them.

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