Has your brain stopped hurting from last month’s initiatives? There’s more coming!

Already qualified for next November: the “Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act for the 21st Century” aka the “Why Pay Southwest $49 To Get To Oakland When I Can Ride A Slower, More Expensive, Publicly Funded Train” Act.

Apparently the sister “Unsafe, Unreliable Train Bond Act” had some problems in the signature gathering stage.

The preamble includes the following :

In light of the events of September 11, 2001, it is very clear that a high-speed passenger train network as described in the High-Speed Rail Authority’s Business Plan is essential for the transportation needs of the growing population and economic activity of this state.

Is there a connection in there? Or can we just use 9/11 to justify whatever is on the agenda: “in light of the events of September 11, it is clear there should be a pro football franchise in Los Angeles?”

Further on, we learn that nearly $1b of the $10b construction bond may be used to fund, among others … cable cars. But initiatives are supposed to be single purpose — shouldn’t that have been covered in the “Cute But Slow-Speed Trolley Act of 1905?”

The first segment planned is LA’s Union Station to San Francisco. If the goal is to make it easier for visitors to reach quaint, picturesque tourist destinations faster, can’t we just widen the 91 to Disneyland?

California bullet train advocates are not as slick as Nevadans promoting a Las Vegas - LA link; they moved their $12b project (their estimate; use a grain of salt) forward via this fall’s pork-laden federal transportation bill (see our Update: Really Fast Train To Nowhere Gets Some Pork and Really Really Rapid Transit: Still A Waste of Money). Seats on that train are projected to cost $120 round trip — more than airfare (or driving). And Las Vegas can’t even meet ridership projections on its own Strip monorail, so you can guess how profitable the long-distance train will be. It would be funny if we didn’t have a bad feeling about who is going to end up funding this boondoggle.

Any initiative committing Californians to spending an additional $1,000 per household had better have some real benefits. “About the same as flying” doesn’t cut it.

Unless the train has the peanuts and pillows the airlines have taken away. Then we’ll rethink our position.

Technorati Tags: 2006 Election, California initiatives, initiatives, train

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 30th, 2005 at 1:03 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under California Schemin'. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.